[Qemu-devel] Re: Extending virtio_console to support multiple ports

[Anthony Liguori]

Amit Shah wrote:
> On (Mon) Aug 31 2009 [09:21:13], Anthony Liguori wrote:
>   
> > Amit Shah wrote:
> >     
> > > Can you please explain your rationale for being so rigid about merging
> > > the two drivers?
> > >   
> > >       
> > Because they do the same thing.  I'm not going to constantly rehash  
> > this.  It's been explained multiple times.
> >     
>
> It hardly looks like the same thing each passing day.
>   

That's BS.  The very first time you posted, you received the same 
feedback from both Paul and I.  See 
http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.emulators.qemu/44778.  That was back 
in June.  You've consistently received the same feedback both on the ML 
and in private.

> We're ending up having to compromise on the performance or functionality
> or simplicity the devices just because of this restriction.
>   

This is _not_ a high performance device and there so far has been no 
functionality impact.  I don't understand why you keep dragging your 
feet about this.  It's very simple, if you post a functional set of 
patches for a converged virtio-console driver, we'll merge it.  If you 
keep arguing about having a separate virtio-serial driver, it's not 
going to get merged.  I don't know how to be more clear than this.

> > If there are implementation issues within the Linux drivers because of  
> > peculiarities of hvc then hvc needs to be fixed.  It has nothing to do  
> > with the driver ABI which is what qemu cares about.
> >     
>
> I'd welcome that effort as well. But we all know that's not going to
> happen anytime soon.
>   

That is not a justification to add a new device in QEMU.  If we add a 
new device everytime we encounter a less than ideal interface within a 
guest, we're going to end up having hundreds of devices.

Regards,

Anthony Liguori