From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([2001:4830:134:3::10]:44948) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1WFk8j-0003VI-VA for qemu-devel@nongnu.org; Tue, 18 Feb 2014 07:51:16 -0500 Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1WFk8d-0008RH-Tq for qemu-devel@nongnu.org; Tue, 18 Feb 2014 07:51:09 -0500 Message-ID: <53035734.7050007@suse.de> Date: Tue, 18 Feb 2014 13:51:00 +0100 From: Alexander Graf MIME-Version: 1.0 References: <1392647854-8067-1-git-send-email-peter.maydell@linaro.org> <53025C08.2030207@redhat.com> <5302B11F.1070400@suse.de> <53033261.7020100@suse.de> <5303411A.5080601@redhat.com> <53034F6F.1010905@suse.de> In-Reply-To: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Subject: Re: [Qemu-devel] [PATCH 0/3] ARM: three easy patches for coverity-reported issues List-Id: List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , To: Peter Maydell Cc: QEMU Developers , Paolo Bonzini , qemu-stable , =?UTF-8?B?QW5kcmVhcyBGw6RyYmVy?= , Patch Tracking On 02/18/2014 01:37 PM, Peter Maydell wrote: > On 18 February 2014 12:17, Alexander Graf wrote: >> On 02/18/2014 12:22 PM, Peter Maydell wrote: >>> My criteria for ARM in the past has typically been "there's >>> a new release every three months, anything that got past >>> the release testing process for release N is sufficiently >>> non-critical it can just go into release N+1". >> Unfortunately this doesn't work for distributions. Distros >> need to maintain a stable branch for the lifetime of a release >> to ensure that we're reasonably regression free. >> >> If you indicate that this doesn't apply to ARM it basically means you admit >> that ARM systems are not yet ready for "stable" use by customers when they >> want to use KVM. At least at the point when we agree that customers do want >> to run on a stable base for virtualization on ARM we need a working -stable >> system for critical fixes. > I agree in general that ARM support needs to move from > its traditional "this is just a dev tool" situation to > a broader level of support/stability guarantees for KVM. > (We're not yet guaranteeing cross-version migration, > for another example there.) Yup. I think it's reasonably to not declare ARM a "stable" target at the current point in time. But I think we agree that we want to change that - timeframe wise probably around the release after 2.0 at which point hopefully PCI and virtio 1.0 have settled. > However again we run into the definition of "what's a > critical fix?". I think if distros need a stable branch > then they need to be prepared to do the work of sorting > through what counts as a critical fix that needs to be > ported to that branch. (For instance, which boards and > targets do they care about?) I think this is up for discussion. If I had to declare anything, I wouldn't consider anything but the virt machine as supported for example - similar to how x86 only really considers the pc machine type stable. > For instance patch 3 only applies to the integrator > board, and I don't consider the guest-to-host border > to be a security boundary for most of our legacy board > models: there's just too much unaudited device code for > that to be trustable. Yes, I fully agree. Traditionally what I've done is to reply to patches that I consider stable material and nag the maintainer about CCing it. After a while people got so afraid of my emails that they started doing the CC themselves :). But in case of the integrator board I personally wouldn't bother ;). Alex