Re: [Qemu-devel] RFC: DSO (dynamic shared objects) support

[Daniel P. Berrange]

On Tue, Jun 18, 2013 at 07:42:11AM -0500, Anthony Liguori wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> On Tue, Jun 18, 2013 at 6:37 AM, Michael Tokarev <address@hidden> wrote:
> > Hello.
> >
> > I looked at what's needed to support DSO (dynamic shared objects)
> > in qemu, in order to be able to split functionality into loadable
> > "plugins".  It isn't exactly difficult, but a few steps are needed
> > still.
> 
> As it turns out, this is an area of interest of mine too.  I put up a
> quick page describing some ideas a few weeks ago.
> 
> http://wiki.qemu.org/Features/Modules
> 
> > The whole thing is about splitting the functionality into plugins
> > from one, single, qemu build, for now, not about allowing 3rd-party
> > plugins to be distributed outside of qemu.
> 
> Ack.  Really critical and important distinction.

Agreed, if we introduce a module system to QEMU we should clearly
and explicitly document that closed source out of tree modules are
considered to be forbidden & a license violation. We should also
make use of any technical measures available to make out of tree
modules impratical to use. For example, use ELF symbol versioning
and make the version tags change on every single minor release so
you can't easily provide pre-compiled 3rd party modules. Obviously
don't install header files anywhere in /usr/include, etc

Daniel
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