[Qemu-devel] [PATCH 0/3] virtio-console: Add support for multiple ports for generic guest-host communication

[Amit Shah]

Hello,

These are the newest patches that address all the previous comments.

In particular, the problem of maintaining backward compat with old
kernel and new qemu is handled by reserving port #0 for a console
port.

The old way of invocation,

    -virtconsole ...

is still acceptable but to use multiple ports, the new invocation
method is preferred:

    -device virtio-serial-pci \
    -device virtconsole...    \
    -device virtserialport...

In case of no '-device virtconsole' specified in the new form of
invocation, an older guest kernel will assume that a virtio-console
port exists. Any writes to such a port end up being ignored.

For requirements, use-cases and some history see

    http://www.linux-kvm.org/page/VMchannel_Requirements

I've also been testing all the features that are presented here by a
small program that is to be run in the guest. It's an interactive
program, available here:

    http://fedorapeople.org/gitweb?p=amitshah/public_git/test-virtserial.git

The automated version of the program will also be put up in the same
repo.

These patches are based on top of the char patches I've sent
previously (and are in Anthony's queue).

Amit Shah (2):
  virtio-console: Add a virtio-serial bus, support for multiple ports
  virtio-console: Add a new virtserialport device for generic serial
    port support

Gerd Hoffmann (1):
  qdev: add string property.

 Makefile.target        |    2 +-
 hw/pc.c                |    9 -
 hw/ppc440_bamboo.c     |    7 -
 hw/qdev-properties.c   |   28 ++
 hw/qdev.c              |    8 +-
 hw/qdev.h              |    4 +
 hw/virtio-console.c    |  206 +++++++-------
 hw/virtio-console.h    |   19 --
 hw/virtio-pci.c        |    8 +-
 hw/virtio-serial-bus.c |  757 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
 hw/virtio-serial.h     |  220 ++++++++++++++
 hw/virtio.h            |    2 +-
 qemu-options.hx        |    6 +-
 sysemu.h               |    6 -
 vl.c                   |   65 +++--
 15 files changed, 1168 insertions(+), 179 deletions(-)
 delete mode 100644 hw/virtio-console.h
 create mode 100644 hw/virtio-serial-bus.c
 create mode 100644 hw/virtio-serial.h