Re: Xen & VMI?

[Ingo Molnar]

* Zachary Amsden <zach@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> > > reduces the QA effort.  You still have 5 Hypervisors you have to 
> > > test against.
> >
> > yes, just like we have thousands of separate PC boards to support. 
> > But as long as the basic ABI is the same, the QA effort on the Linux 
> > kernel side is alot more focused. (Distros still have 
> > 18446744073709551616 total combinations to QA, and have to make an 
> > educated guess to reduce that to a more manageable number.)
> 
> But hardware PC boards don't do anything as remotely complicate as 
> changing the semantics required for correctness in you MMU 
> implementation. [...]

ugh, PC boards are actually far worse and far more diverse than any 
variances between hypervisors, but i digress.

anyway, my point stands: the Linux kernel is significantly more 
maintainable and easier to QA if it has only a single 'external' 
hypervisor ABI to worry about - and that might as well be VMI. This is a 
really obvious point, i expected the discussion to center more around 
the specifics of such a move ;-)

	Ingo
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