Re: [PULL v2 00/73] tcg plugins and testing updates

[Peter Maydell]

On Wed, 6 Nov 2019 at 12:42, Markus Armbruster <address@hidden> wrote:
>
> Markus Armbruster <address@hidden> writes:
>
> > Alex Bennée <address@hidden> writes:
> >
> >> Markus Armbruster <address@hidden> writes:
> >>
> >>> I hate to interfere with the merging of working code for non-technical
> >>> reasons....
> >>>
> >>> This is a plugin interface.  As I wrote in reply to v4, I'd like to see
> >>> a pragmatic argument why abuse of the plugin interface to circumvent the
> >>> GPL is not practical.  This might include "not a stable interface", "you
> >>> have to link with a truckload of gpl code", "the set of things you can
> >>> do is deliberately extremely limited".
> [...]
> >>> If merging this could be delayed until the licensing ramifications have
> >>> become a bit more clear, I'd be obliged.
> >>
> >> I'd rather not unless we can make an exception for late merging of the
> >> PR. I've worked quite hard to make sure everything is ready for the 4.2
> >> window and I'd rather not miss a whole release cycle on a
> >> misunderstanding of what these plugins allow.
> >
> > I think there are multiple ways to avoid the nuclear outcome.
> >
> > Coming to a conclusion before the soft freeze is the nicest one.
> >
> > Making an exception for late merging is another one, but Peter may
> > prefer not to.
> >
> > Yet another one is merging the pull request before the soft freeze with
> > the understanding that it'll be reverted unless we come to a positive
> > conclusion before say -rc0 (Nov 5).  I'm confident we can work it out in
> > Lyon.
>
> The series has since been merged, so just for the record: we did.  The
> plugin interface looks useful for its stated purposes, yet pretty
> useless for GPL circumvention.  We'll evolve it deliberately to preserve
> that property.

The one specific thing that did come out of discussions at Lyon
was that we'd like to have a basic "check the version" to catch
mismatched/out-of-date plugins; Alex has a patch on list for that.

thanks
-- PMM