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

[Vadim Rozenfeld]

On Tue, 2012-01-03 at 13:12 +0000, Stefan Hajnoczi wrote:
> 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?
> 
More QA resources for WHQL testing against upstream QEMU and KVM, and
different distributions, including Fedora, Ubuntu, etc. And one more
Software Engineer/Software Engineer In Test who will be in touch with
community.

Cheers,
Vadim.
> 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