Re: [PATCH v2 0/9] Introduce vfio-pci-core subsystem

[Christoph Hellwig]

On Wed, Feb 10, 2021 at 09:34:52AM -0400, Jason Gunthorpe wrote:
> > I'm a bit confused about the change from v1 to v2, especially about
> > how to inject module specific operations. From live migration p.o.v
> > it may requires two hook points at least for some devices (e.g. i40e 
> > in original Yan's example):
> 
> IMHO, it was too soon to give up on putting the vfio_device_ops in the
> final driver- we should try to define a reasonable public/private
> split of vfio_pci_device as is the norm in the kernel. No reason we
> can't achieve that.
> 
> >  register a migration region and intercept guest writes to specific
> > registers. [PATCH 4/9] demonstrates the former but not the latter
> > (which is allowed in v1).
> 
> And this is why, the ROI to wrapper every vfio op in a PCI op just to
> keep vfio_pci_device completely private is poor :(

Yes.  If Alex has a strong preference to keep some values private
a split between vfio_pci_device vfio_pci_device_priv might be doable,
but it is somewhat silly.

> > Then another question. Once we have this framework in place, do we 
> > mandate this approach for any vendor specific tweak or still allow
> > doing it as vfio_pci_core extensions (such as igd and zdev in this
> > series)?
> 
> I would say no to any further vfio_pci_core extensions that are tied
> to specific PCI devices. Things like zdev are platform features, they
> are not tied to specific PCI devices

Yes, ZDEV is just a special case of exposing extra information for any
PCI device on s390.  It does not fit any split up vfio_pci framework.
In fact I wonder why it even has its own config option.

> > vfio-mdev is just the channel to bring VFIO APIs through mdev core
> > to underlying vendor specific mdev device driver, which is already
> > granted flexibility to tweak whatever needs through mdev_parent_ops.
> 
> This is the second thing, and it could just be deleted. The actual
> final mdev driver can just use vfio_device_ops directly. The
> redirection shim in vfio_mdev.c doesn't add value.

Yes, that would simplify a lot of things.