[RFC] remove vhost-cuse

[RFC] remove vhost-cuse

[Yuanhan Liu]

It's something echoed around in my mind for a long while, and here I'm
gonna make it public: a proposal to remove vhost-cuse.

Vhost-cuse was invented before vhost-user exist. The both are actually
doing the same thing: a vhost-net implementation in user space. But they
are not exactly the same thing.

Firstly, vhost-cuse is harder for use; no one seems to care it, either.
Furthermore, since v2.1, a large majority of development effort has gone
to vhost-user. For example, we extended the vhost-user spec to add the
multiple queue support. We also added the vhost-user live migration at
v16.04 and the latest one, vhost-user reconnect that allows vhost app
restart without restarting the guest. Both of them are very important
features for product usage and none of them works for vhost-cuse.

You now see that the difference between vhost-user and vhost-cuse is
big (and will be bigger and bigger as time moves forward), that you
should never use vhost-cuse, that we should drop it completely.

The remove would also result to a much cleaner code base, allowing us
to do all kinds of extending easier.

A talk with Huawei offline showed that he backs this proposal. I was
also told by Ciara that she actually had the same idea: she has already
cooked a patch to remove vhost-cuse support from OVS:

    http://openvswitch.org/pipermail/dev/2016-July/074696.html

So I'm proposing to mark vhost-cuse as deprecated in this release and
remove it completely at the next release (v16.11).

Comments/thoughts, or objections?

	--yliu

Re: [RFC] remove vhost-cuse

[Yuanhan Liu]

You see that no body cares it :)

So I will make a patch to mark vhost-cuse as deprecated shortly.
Thomas, works to you?

	--yliu

On Mon, Jul 11, 2016 at 11:59:55AM +0800, Yuanhan Liu wrote:
> It's something echoed around in my mind for a long while, and here I'm
> gonna make it public: a proposal to remove vhost-cuse.
> 
> Vhost-cuse was invented before vhost-user exist. The both are actually
> doing the same thing: a vhost-net implementation in user space. But they
> are not exactly the same thing.
> 
> Firstly, vhost-cuse is harder for use; no one seems to care it, either.
> Furthermore, since v2.1, a large majority of development effort has gone
> to vhost-user. For example, we extended the vhost-user spec to add the
> multiple queue support. We also added the vhost-user live migration at
> v16.04 and the latest one, vhost-user reconnect that allows vhost app
> restart without restarting the guest. Both of them are very important
> features for product usage and none of them works for vhost-cuse.
> 
> You now see that the difference between vhost-user and vhost-cuse is
> big (and will be bigger and bigger as time moves forward), that you
> should never use vhost-cuse, that we should drop it completely.
> 
> The remove would also result to a much cleaner code base, allowing us
> to do all kinds of extending easier.
> 
> A talk with Huawei offline showed that he backs this proposal. I was
> also told by Ciara that she actually had the same idea: she has already
> cooked a patch to remove vhost-cuse support from OVS:
> 
>     http://openvswitch.org/pipermail/dev/2016-July/074696.html
> 
> So I'm proposing to mark vhost-cuse as deprecated in this release and
> remove it completely at the next release (v16.11).
> 
> Comments/thoughts, or objections?
> 
> 	--yliu

Re: [RFC] remove vhost-cuse

[Thomas Monjalon]

2016-07-15 16:42, Yuanhan Liu:
> You see that no body cares it :)
> 
> So I will make a patch to mark vhost-cuse as deprecated shortly.
> Thomas, works to you?

Perfect. Thanks Yuanhan


> On Mon, Jul 11, 2016 at 11:59:55AM +0800, Yuanhan Liu wrote:
> > It's something echoed around in my mind for a long while, and here I'm
> > gonna make it public: a proposal to remove vhost-cuse.
> > 
> > Vhost-cuse was invented before vhost-user exist. The both are actually
> > doing the same thing: a vhost-net implementation in user space. But they
> > are not exactly the same thing.
> > 
> > Firstly, vhost-cuse is harder for use; no one seems to care it, either.
> > Furthermore, since v2.1, a large majority of development effort has gone
> > to vhost-user. For example, we extended the vhost-user spec to add the
> > multiple queue support. We also added the vhost-user live migration at
> > v16.04 and the latest one, vhost-user reconnect that allows vhost app
> > restart without restarting the guest. Both of them are very important
> > features for product usage and none of them works for vhost-cuse.
> > 
> > You now see that the difference between vhost-user and vhost-cuse is
> > big (and will be bigger and bigger as time moves forward), that you
> > should never use vhost-cuse, that we should drop it completely.
> > 
> > The remove would also result to a much cleaner code base, allowing us
> > to do all kinds of extending easier.
> > 
> > A talk with Huawei offline showed that he backs this proposal. I was
> > also told by Ciara that she actually had the same idea: she has already
> > cooked a patch to remove vhost-cuse support from OVS:
> > 
> >     http://openvswitch.org/pipermail/dev/2016-July/074696.html
> > 
> > So I'm proposing to mark vhost-cuse as deprecated in this release and
> > remove it completely at the next release (v16.11).
> > 
> > Comments/thoughts, or objections?
> > 
> > 	--yliu

Re: [RFC] remove vhost-cuse

[Yuanhan Liu]

On Fri, Jul 15, 2016 at 11:14:52AM +0200, Thomas Monjalon wrote:
> 2016-07-15 16:42, Yuanhan Liu:
> > You see that no body cares it :)
> > 
> > So I will make a patch to mark vhost-cuse as deprecated shortly.
> > Thomas, works to you?
> 
> Perfect. Thanks Yuanhan

Great! deprecate note has been sent out.

	--yliu