Re: [Qemu-devel] Versioned machine types for ARM/non-x86 ? (Was Re: [PATCH v4 0/2] ARM: add 'virt' platform)

[Anthony Liguori <aliguori@us.ibm.com>]

"Daniel P. Berrange" <berrange@redhat.com> writes:

> On Mon, Aug 05, 2013 at 12:18:10PM +0100, Peter Maydell wrote:
>> This patch series adds a 'virt' platform which uses the
>> kernel's mach-virt (fully device-tree driven) support
>> to create a simple minimalist platform intended for
>> use for KVM VM guests. It's based on John Rigby's
>> patches, but I've overhauled it a lot:
>
> On x86, we've long had versioned machine names, so that we can
> make changes in future QEMU releases without breaking guest ABI
> compatibility. AFAICT, the problem has basically been ignored
> on non-x86 platforms in QEMU. Given the increased interest in
> ARM in particular, should we use the addition of this new 'virt'
> machine type, as an opportunity to introduce versioning for
> ARM too. eg make this machine be called 'virt-1.0.6' and then
> have 'virt' simply be an alias that points to the most recent
> version.

I've been thinking about this for SPAPR too.  Like virt, I'm not sure
the platform is stable enough for this but I expect it to be soon.

However, unlike PC, I'd like to do linear versioning and avoid bumping
at every release.

IOW, spapr-1, spapr-2, spapr-3, etc.

I think virt ought to try to do the same.

Regards,

Anthony Liguori

>
> Regards,
> Daniel
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