Re: [Qemu-devel] [PATCH v2] hw/arm/virt-acpi - reserve ECAM space as PNP0C02 device

[Peter Maydell]

On 17 January 2017 at 09:49, Andrew Jones <address@hidden> wrote:
> In some cases the problem we're solving with the compat guards is
> a bit hypothetical, but, IMHO, nonetheless a good practice. While
> we may be sure that AAVMF and Linux will be fine with this table
> changing under their feet, we can't be sure there aren't other
> mach-virt users that have more sensitive firmwares/OSes. An ACPI-
> sensitive OS may notice the change on its next reboot after a
> migration, and then simply refuse to continue.

There's also the case where you do a VM migration midway through
UEFI booting up, I think, which might cause things to go wrong
if you catch it just at the wrong moment.

> Now, that said, I just spoke with Igor in order to learn the x86
> practice. He says that the policy has been more lax than what I
> suggest above. Hypothetical, low-risk issues are left unguarded,
> and only when a bug is found during testing is it then managed.
> The idea is to try and reduce the amount of compat variables and
> conditions needed in the ACPI generation code, but, of course, at
> some level of risk to users expecting their versioned machine type
> to always appear the same.
>
> So far we've been strict with mach-virt, guarding all hypothetical
> issues. Perhaps this patch is a good example to get a discussion
> started on whether or not we should be so strict though.

That said, I don't have a very strong opinion here, beyond that
we should be consistent at least with x86 practice.

thanks
-- PMM