[Qemu-devel] Re: POLL: Why do you use kqemu?

[Blue Swirl <blauwirbel@gmail.com>]

On 6/6/09, Jan Kiszka <jan.kiszka@web.de> wrote:
> Blue Swirl wrote:
>  > On 6/6/09, Avi Kivity <avi@redhat.com> wrote:
>  >> Andreas Färber wrote:
>  >>
>  >>> Or as another example, I've been unable to try KVM with svn/git QEMU
>  >> because new capability defines keep being added that block compiling QEMU
>  >> with KVM from any mainstream distribution. With nobody here being able to
>  >> recommend a working distribution, that makes KVM a moot alternative,
>  >> especially on systems you can't install your own kernel modules on. I just
>  >> hope that Fedora 11 will let me try it.
>  >>  Try qemu-kvm.git, that should compile and run on almost anything (and is a
>  >> lot faster and more featureful than kvm support in qemu.git).
>  >
>  > Maybe the backwards compatibility features should be ported to QEMU?
>  > For example, is there a workaround for
>  > #error Missing KVM capability KVM_CAP_DESTROY_MEMORY_REGION_WORKS
>  > ?
>
>
> Given that we have always-up-to-date kvm-kmod packages with support down
>  to reasonable kernel versions, I would prefer to keep upstream clean
>  from old workarounds. They should only be needed for issues found very
>  recently (KVM_CAP_JOIN_MEMORY_REGIONS_WORKS) or that might be found in
>  the future.

But then I (and from Andreas' message I gather that many others) can't
test KVM support on QEMU without building, installing and maintaining
(updating, rebuilding, reinstalling etc) my own kernel instead of the
distro build.

Does this also mean that KVM stuff in QEMU releases will not be usable
for anyone (except those building their own kernels) until distros
upgrade to a compatible kernel version a few years later?