Re: Paravirtualization on VMware's Platform [VMI].

Chris Wright
2009-09-18T01:04:18Z

* Jeremy Fitzhardinge (jeremy@goop.org) wrote:
> On 09/17/09 17:34, Chris Wright wrote:
> >> One of the options that I am contemplating is to drop the code from the
> >> tip tree in this release cycle, and given that this should be a low risk
> >> change we can remove it from Linus's tree later in the merge cycle.
> >>
> >> Let me know your views on this or if you think we should do this some
> >> other way.
> >>
> > Typically we give time measured in multiple release cycles
> > before deprecating a feature. This means placing an entry in
> > Documentation/feature-removal-schedule.txt, and potentially
> > adding some noise to warn users they are using a deprecated
> > feature.
>
> That's true if the feature has some functional effect on users. But at
> first sight, VMI is really just an optimisation, and a non-VMI-equipped
> kernel would be completely functionally equivalent, right?

True. I'm all for removing code that's got no planned maintenance and
no place to run ;-)

> On the other hand, there could well be a performance regression which
> could affect users. However they're taking the explicit step of
> withdrawing support for VMI, so I guess they can just take that in their
> stride.

Yeah. Different than normal deprecation since it's atop VMware's HV
which is all in their domain.

thanks,
-chris