Re: [PATCH (V9) 0/2] Add V4V to Xen

[Ross Philipson <ross.philipson@citrix.com>]

On 05/31/2013 05:26 AM, Vincent Hanquez wrote:
> On 05/31/2013 10:01 AM, Ian Campbell wrote:
>> I think we need to see and agree on both the client and hypervisor side
>> before either can be committed, since review on either could cause ABI
>> changes.
> Yes, of course. Once some more code is ready, but as of now, we still
> need review and comments on
> the hypervisor side to make sure the hypervisor part itself is ready
> (soundness,design,security,etc).
>
> I want to note however that the v4v capability provided is modeled like
> a simplified "network" stack,
> so that the design is suppose to stand by itself without any client code.
>
>> What is your upgrade plan for libvchan users? Is it to add vsock support
>> to vchan?
> I'm not aware of such a plan, nor i'm aware of libvchan or what it
> does/doesn't provides in the first place.
> If that make sense, then a plan could be devised.
>

I am not sure where this requirement to support the libvchan interface 
or library (?) came from. The v4v client code in both Linux and Windows 
avoids having libraries that you have to use. On the Linux side, as 
Vincent pointed out, we implement a socket family and you use it as you 
would any other socket. On the Windows side, aside from a small header 
file that helps you send the right IOCTLs to initialize things, you use 
Windows APIs like ReadFile/WriteFile to interact with v4v.

Of course I know this would all be more obvious if we had released the 
"client" or guest bits along with the xen part. We are trying to do that 
now. We have someone (Vincent) working on the driver that will be 
upstreamed to Linux. We can drop a pre-release of that when it is 
functional and ready for posting. That work is happening now.

There is a plan to open source all of our Citrix PV Windows drivers. I 
do not have good details on that plan or its schedule but the Windows 
v4v driver would be part of that overall package. Again, we can drop a 
pre-release version of the Windows v4v driver ahead of the other work.

I had intended to send an email like this but responses came in quite 
rapidly to the v4v posting.

Thanks
Ross