Re: [RFC] Unify KVM kernel-space and user-space code into a singleproject

[Avi Kivity]

On 03/18/2010 12:50 PM, Ingo Molnar wrote:
> * Avi Kivity<avi@xxxxxxxxxx>  wrote:
>
>    
> > > The moment any change (be it as trivial as fixing a GUI detail or as
> > > complex as a new feature) involves two or more packages, development speed
> > > slows down to a crawl - while the complexity of the change might be very
> > > low!
> > >        
> > Why is that?
> >      
> It's very simple: because the contribution latencies and overhead compound,
> almost inevitably.
>    

It's not inevitable, if the projects are badly run, you'll have high 
latencies, but projects don't have to be badly run.

> If you ever tried to implement a combo GCC+glibc+kernel feature you'll know
> ...
>
> Even with the best-run projects in existence it takes forever and is very
> painful - and here i talk about first hand experience over many years.
>    

Try sending a patch to qemu-devel@, you may be pleasantly surprised.


> > I the maintainers of all packages are cooperative and responsive, then the
> > patches will get accepted quickly.  If they aren't, development will be
> > slow. [...]
> >      
> I'm afraid practice is different from the rosy ideal you paint there. Even
> with assumed 'perfect projects' there's always random differences between
> projects, causing doubled (tripled) overhead and compounded up overhead:
>
>   - random differences in release schedules
>
>   - random differences in contribution guidelines
>
>   - random differences in coding style
>    

None of these matter for steady contributors.

> > [...] It isn't any different from contributing to two unrelated kernel
> > subsystems (which are in fact in different repositories until the next merge
> > window).
> >      
> You mention a perfect example: contributing to multipe kernel subsystems. Even
> _that_ is very noticeably harder than contributing to a single subsystem - due
> to the inevitable buerocratic overhead, due to different development trees,
> due to different merge criteria.
>
> So you are underlining my point (perhaps without intending to): treating
> closely related bits of technology as a single project is much better.
>
> Obviously arch/x86/kvm/, virt/ and tools/kvm/ should live in a single
> development repository (perhaps micro-differentiated by a few topical
> branches), for exactly those reasons you mention.
>    

How is a patch for the qemu GUI eject button and the kvm shadow mmu 
related?  Should a single maintainer deal with both?


--
error compiling committee.c: too many arguments to function

--
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
Please read the FAQ at  http://www.tux.org/lkml/