Re: [RFC v1 4/8] x86/init: add linker table support

[Luis R. Rodriguez]

On Thu, Jan 21, 2016 at 4:42 PM, H. Peter Anvin <hpa@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> On 01/21/16 16:25, Luis R. Rodriguez wrote:
>>>
>>> Basically, if the hardware is enumerable using standard PC mechanisms (PCI, ACPI) and doesn't need a special boot flow it should use type 0.
>>
>> I can extend the documentation as part of this to be clear.
>>
>> I will note though that this still leaves a gap on code which might
>> want to access the question "are we in a virt environment, and if so
>> on which one" in between really early boot and right before
>> init_hypervisor_platform(). Or rather, given subarch can be used by
>> Xen and lguest but not KVM it means KVM doesn't get to use it. It may
>> not need it, but its also rather trivial to set up on qemu, and I have
>> a patch for that if we wanted one for KVM. That would extend the
>> definition of subarch a bit more, but as it stands today its use was
>> rather limited. Heck, subharch_data is to this day unused.
>>
>
> KVM is not a subarch, and Xen HVM isn't either; the subarch was meant to
> be specifically to handle nonstandard boot entries; the CE4100 extension
> was itself kind of a hack.
>
> If you have a genuine need for a "hypervisor type" then that is a
> separate thing and should be treated separately from subarch.  However,
> you need to consider that some hypervisors can emulate other hypervisors
> and you may have more than one hypervisor API available.

Thanks, I've pegged this onto my series as a documentation extensions
for boot params.

 Luis