Re: [Qemu-devel] CFP: 1st International QEMU Users Forum

[wolfgang mueller <wolfgang@acm.org>]

Alexander,
the people we are addressing and we would like to bring together is from 
the QEMU emulation community.
We are interested in running different ISAs mainly under Linux and 
Windows versions. There is a huge additional
interest from industry for this part to QEMU for embedded systems/SW 
development. The focus we have chosen
for the DATE conference is SystemC integration with QEMU emulation since 
the embedded systems and SystemC
community meets at DATE so that we expect several people from them to 
attend. However, as already written, we
basically failed to find any indication for contact point for the 
emulation community. Any pointers are highly appreciated.

Virtualization  is not of any interest in that workshop as there if 
course already exists the KVM forum you refered to.
I understood from the available information and contacts that there is a 
common consensus that the QEMU
virtualization community is denoted as "KVM community" and not as "QEMU 
community" which also brings the
difference to the point, right? My understanding so far is that "QEMU 
community" refers mainly to the software emulation
people part.

PS: I have no idea about the number of people who are on the 
qemu-devel@nongnu.org list we are cc'ing.
I hope there are not too many and that they are interested in our 
communication. Otherwise, I apologize.

w.


On 25.11.2010 12:03, Alexander Graf wrote:
> Wolfgang,
>
> On 25.11.2010, at 11:30, wolfgang mueller wrote:
>
>> Dear Alexander Graf,
>> thank you for contacting me.
>> I hope that I am right when I understand your below email as a 
>> complaint that we have not contacted you before organizing
>> this event.
>
> The complaint is mostly that you have not approached the community, 
> yes :).
>
>> First of all, we understand our event not as an official QEMU event 
>> nor have we stated this anywhere or that that we are the
>> owners of QEMU.
>>
>> Let me explain about the background of the Workshop.
>> We as QEMU users, occasionally meet other QEMU users at conferences 
>> and we observed that the number was significantly growing
>> during the last years (thanks to the excellent work of the 
>> developers). We googled for any contacts to other QEMU users and
>> did neither found any workshop nor any mailing list or anything 
>> similar we could contact. The only thing we found as a main contact
>> was Fabrice  Bellard and a huge set of developers (~3000). We saw 
>> Fabrice Bellard as the "owner" and contacted him. Unfortunately
>> he rejected as he has no longer interest in QEMU.
>
> I guess we should really remove most traces of Fabrice if he isn't 
> even helpful enough to direct you to the mailing list. The maintainer 
> situation should be explained in the MAINTAINERS file in the qemu 
> source tree. Apparently the last attempt to redo that file and make it 
> contain actual current information failed. Sigh.
>
> There is a group of people with commit rights to the source tree. Each 
> of them have special and in general different fields of interest. 
> There are also several submaintainers who keep track of subsystems, 
> but don't have commit rights and route everything through the few 
> people with commit rights.
>
> In general, it's similar to the Linux kernel, but with a schizophrenic 
> Linus.
>
> So the "right thing" to do would have been to send a mail to the 
> qemu-devel mailing list, asking for feedback. The right people 
> definitely do read the list.
>
>> As we did not find any current "leader" or dedicated leading group 
>> beyond the web site, we decided to move on since we were interested
>> to get the QEMU users together to join efforts and exchange ideas and 
>> developments (The alternative would have been to contact
>> all over 3000 QEMU developers and to discuss with them the 
>> organization of such a event. However, from the first idea to the
>> possibility to get it accepted in the framework of the DATE 
>> conference were very few weeks so that we did not see it as a viable
>> alternative).
>>
>> I now understand that we obviously missed your role in that community 
>> as the leader or one of the leaders and qemu-devel@nongnu.org
>> as the community or part of the community. Therefore, we apologize 
>> that we did not contact you or qemu-devel@nongnu.org.
>
> Don't worry about me. I feel myself in general rather representing 
> minorities in qemu. The closest to a "leader" position in qemu these 
> days is probably Anthony Liguori. CC'ing him.
>
>>
>> However, currently though already very late, we could offer you that 
>> you can join and and we can list you as a third organizer.
>> But you have to make an immediate decision as the DATE program will 
>> go to print in about 10 days. Otherwise you will be only
>> listed on the web.
>>
>> Additionally, we are still looking for a person who is giving a 
>> general 45-minute QEMU tutorial/overview. As we were enforce by the
>> hosting DATE conference to put a name there, please just take it as a 
>> placeholder for the worst case that we do not find anybody else.
>> Are you interested or anybody from qemu-devel@nongnu.org?
>
> This is exactly the reason I approached you sceptic on the whole 
> thing. Qemu is _very_ diverse. It ranges from prototyping non-existing 
> hardware over user-space only emulation to virtualization. Each of the 
> different aspects have their very own issues and traction. The group 
> that's the most active currently is the virtualization crowd. Which 
> target audience are you going for?
>
>>
>> Finally, I actually do not share your concerns that people register 
>> to get more information "about command line switches to virtualize
>> on x86 hardware". I really would expect that people read the 
>> programme before they register. However, maybe you know the community
>> better than I do.
>
> After checking on the pricing for previous years I agree with you :).
>
>>
>> For the future, we are currently not planning a second Users' Forum 
>> and we are open to forward the organization of a second workshop
>> to anybody else.
>>
>> Why don't you simply take this event as a first trigger to organize 
>> an QEMU conference for Developers and users.
>> We can help you by forwarding the email addresses of some of the 
>> people. I can also help you if you want.
>> This can be the start of a real great effort with huge benefit to the 
>> community.
>
> As stated above, things are more difficult than that, but I agree. We 
> do have annual KVM Forum meetings where we gather all the 
> virtualization people from Qemu as well and talk about things there. 
> The slides and recordings are publicly available, if you're 
> interested: http://www.linux-kvm.org/page/KVM_Forum_2010. In general, 
> people surrounding KVM meet quite a bit.
>
> For the emulation side, things look different. I'm not aware of any 
> traction on the emulation side of Qemu. Getting people together for 
> that one is certainly lacking. I'm not sure I'm the right person to 
> talk to there. If nobody else steps up, I could barely play the role 
> of someone who knows what he's talking about, but I'm myself more of a 
> virtualization person too.
>
> So it all boils down to the audience you're expecting. From the 
> announcement and colocation with DATE, I assume you're looking mostly 
> for SystemC integration? That probably plays well into the emulation 
> piece. I don't think that doing yet another 'normal' virtualization 
> focused event would be beneficial - we get plenty of gatherings around 
> that already.
>
>
> Alex
>


-- 
-- wolfgang
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Wolfgang Mueller          wolfgang@acm.org       adt.cs.upb.de/wolfgang
Paderborn University/C-LAB, Fuerstenallee 11,  33098 Paderborn, Germany
Phone:(++)49-5251.60.6134                       Fax:(++)49-5251.60.6065
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