Re: [Qemu-devel] [PATCH 0/3] VFIO-based PCI device assignment for QEMU 1.2

[Cole Robinson <crobinso@redhat.com>]

On 08/13/2012 03:31 PM, Anthony Liguori wrote:
> Jan Kiszka <jan.kiszka@siemens.com> writes:
> 
>> On 2012-08-13 15:58, Avi Kivity wrote:
>>> On 08/13/2012 04:27 PM, Anthony Liguori wrote:
>>>
>>>> Thanks for pushing this forward!  Hopefully this will finally kill off
>>>> qemu-kvm.git for good.
>>>
>>> No, it won't.  vfio requires a 3.6 kernel, which we cannot assume anyone
>>> has.  We'll need the original device assignment code side-by-side.
>>
>> ...which is on my to-do list for 1.3.
> 
> Is there a deprecation plan for the old device assignment code?
> 
> I'm not really against the idea of requiring a new kernel for new
> features.
> 
> From a Fedora/OpenSUSE point of view, would supporting old kernels be a
> requirement to stop shipping qemu-kvm.git over qemu.git?
> 

Speaking as a Fedora maintainer, compatibility with old kernels isn't that
important to us, provided the functionality of the new way is comparable to
the old way.

As far as switching over to qemu.git, I assume there will eventually be a day
when the fork would 'end' and qemu-kvm would stop getting its own releases,
which is when we'd switch. Maybe that assumption is wrong or over simplifying
the trade offs, but if merge work is ongoing I don't see a very compelling
reason to switch.

- Cole