Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1753391AbZFBXtR (ORCPT ); Tue, 2 Jun 2009 19:49:17 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1751803AbZFBXtE (ORCPT ); Tue, 2 Jun 2009 19:49:04 -0400 Received: from www.tglx.de ([62.245.132.106]:37823 "EHLO www.tglx.de" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1751480AbZFBXtD (ORCPT ); Tue, 2 Jun 2009 19:49:03 -0400 Date: Wed, 3 Jun 2009 01:41:43 +0200 (CEST) From: Thomas Gleixner To: Steven Rostedt cc: George Dunlap , David Miller , "jeremy@goop.org" , "mingo@elte.hu" , Dan Magenheimer , "avi@redhat.com" , "xen-devel@lists.xensource.com" , "x86@kernel.org" , "linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org" , Keir Fraser , "torvalds@linux-foundation.org" , "gregkh@suse.de" , "kurt.hackel@oracle.com" , Ian Pratt , "xen-users@lists.xensource.com" , ksrinivasan , "EAnderson@novell.com" , "wimcoekaerts@wimmekes.net" , Stephen Spector , "jens.axboe@oracle.com" , "npiggin@suse.de" Subject: Re: Xen is a feature In-Reply-To: <20090602224051.GB32428@goodmis.org> Message-ID: References: <162f4c90-6431-4a2a-b337-6d7451d7b11e@default> <20090528001350.GD26820@elte.hu> <4A1F302E.8030501@goop.org> <20090528.210559.137121893.davem@davemloft.net> <4A1FCE8E.2060604@eu.citrix.com> <20090602224051.GB32428@goodmis.org> User-Agent: Alpine 2.00 (LFD 1167 2008-08-23) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 1629 Lines: 38 On Tue, 2 Jun 2009, Steven Rostedt wrote: > If we were to break an interface with Dom0 for Xen then we would have a bunch > of people crying foul about us breaking a defined API. One of Thomas's complaints > (and a valid one) is that once Linux supports an external API it must always > keep it compatible. This will hamper new development in Linux if the APIs are > scattered throughout the kernel without much thought. > > Now here's a crazy solution. Merge the Xen hypervisor into Linux ;-) Not that crazy as you might think. > Give full ownership of Xen to the Linux community. One of your people could be > a maintainer. This way the API between Dom0 and the hypervisor would be an internal s/API/ABI/ :) > one. If you needed to upgrade Dom0, you also must upgrade the hypervisor, but that > would be fine since the hypervisor would also be in the Kernel proper. > > This may not solve all the issues that the x86 maintainers have with the Dom0 > patches, but it may help solve the API one. In fact it would resolve the ABI problem once and forever as we could fix hypervisor / dom0 in sync. hypervisor and dom0 need to run in lock-step anyway if you want to make useful progress aside of maintaining versioned interfaces which are known to bloat rapidly. It's not a big deal to set a flag day which says: update hypervisor and (dom0) kernel in one go. Thanks, tglx -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/