Re: [Qemu-devel] About making QEMU to LIBs!

[Stefan Hajnoczi]

On Thu, Mar 28, 2019 at 02:45:37PM +0800, Xiao Guangrong wrote:
> 
> 
> On 3/27/19 5:41 PM, Stefano Garzarella wrote:
> > Hi Yang, Xiao,
> > Just adding few things, because I'm currently exploring the QEMU modules
> > in order to reduce the boot time and the footprint.
> > 
> 
> Hi Stefan Hajnoczi and Stefano Garzarella,
> 
> The work exploring the QEMU modules looks really good. we will
> evaluate it.
> 
> Hmm... how about make these modules usable out of QEMU, it seems
> doable, right? But I'm not sure how much effort we need.

This requires a stable API, which QEMU currently does not offer.  It's
the same situation as Linux kernel APIs for kernel modules - function
prototypes can be added/removed/changed between kernel releases so
third-party code will break.

The effort involved in stable APIs is an ongoing maintenance overhead to
ensure backwards compatibility, a deprecation policy for removing old
interfaces, etc.  This makes it harder to change the code and we try to
avoid it for that reason.

If you contribute your code to qemu.git then stable APIs aren't
necessary since there will be build errors if someone changes an API
your code is using.  Do you think your code fits into the scope of QEMU?

Stefan

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