Re: [Qemu-devel] KVM call agenda for Tuesday 3

[Stefan Hajnoczi]

On Tue, Jan 3, 2012 at 12:15 PM, Dor Laor <address@hidden> wrote:
> On 01/03/2012 10:33 AM, Stefan Hajnoczi wrote:
>>
>> On Mon, Jan 02, 2012 at 01:09:40PM +0100, Juan Quintela wrote:
>>>
>>> Please send in any agenda items you are interested in covering.
>>
>>
>> Status of virtio drivers for Windows:
>>  * Unsupported in community today
>
>
> Why?

Because there is no one around to answer questions or look into bugs
in a timely manner.

I'm not saying that virtio Windows drivers are unsupported, I'm saying
that the _QEMU community_ isn't supporting them if you look at the
mailing list and bug tracker activity.  Perhaps we should direct
questions about the virtio drivers to some place?  I've already been
CCing and bouncing questions from users to Vadim for several months.

>>  * Bugs languish on bug tracker/mailing list
>
>
> There are 1.2 developers on them and Vadim does the enlightenment support
> for kvm too. I don't see plenty of issues that are currently actively, open,
> can you point us to such?

Yes, this is exactly the point.  Vadim is doing a great job but he's
only 1 person.  Having 1.2 people that handle virtio Windows driver
means the bus factor is dangerous and we cannot scale.

The bug that brought this to mind again:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/qemu/+bug/818673

Another email thread on virtio-balloon driver issues (looks unsolved):
http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/qemu-devel/2011-10/msg01240.html

> There is a legal issue w/ WHQL drivers but self sign is not a probably and I
> believe that's what we have today.

For a user anything other than first-class native drivers is a red
flag that this software may work poorly - on modern Windows that means
properly signed drivers.

Although signing might seem like a secondary issue I think it's what
actually has stopped us from growing a community around the virtio
Windows drivers.  There are very few people who can help because a
development environment where you can only contribute patches but not
build the code fully takes the fun away.

Basically I'm asking: is there a way we can do the virtio Windows
driver development more in public, in the community, so that we will
grow stronger in KVM Windows guest support?

How do we bootstrap this into more than 1.2 people who can hack on and
help with guest drivers?

My suggestions are for those already involved to actively join IRC,
mailing list, and bug tracker so they can pass on their knowledge and
watch for questions.  Also, if there are known bugs and TODOs then
please post them so folks with time and interest can help get them
fixed.

Stefan