Re: [PATCH 0/1] Update vfio-user module to the latest

[Michael S. Tsirkin]

On Fri, Aug 05, 2022 at 09:24:56AM +0100, Daniel P. Berrangé wrote:
> On Fri, Aug 05, 2022 at 09:21:07AM +0200, Thomas Huth wrote:
> > On 02/08/2022 12.00, Zhang, Chen wrote:
> > > 
> > > 
> > > > -----Original Message-----
> > > > From: Qemu-devel <qemu-devel-
> > > > bounces+chen.zhang=intel.com@nongnu.org> On Behalf Of Jagannathan
> > > > Raman
> > > > Sent: Tuesday, August 2, 2022 9:24 AM
> > > > To: qemu-devel@nongnu.org
> > > > Cc: stefanha@gmail.com; berrange@redhat.com
> > > > Subject: [PATCH 0/1] Update vfio-user module to the latest
> > > > 
> > > > Hi,
> > > > 
> > > > This patch updates the libvfio-user submodule to the latest.
> > > 
> > > Just a rough idea, why not depends on linux distribution for the 
> > > libvfio-user.so?
> > > It looks no libvfio-user packet in distribution's repo.
> > > 
> > > Hi Thomas/Daniel:
> > > 
> > > For the RFC QEMU user space eBPF support,
> > > https://lore.kernel.org/all/20220617073630.535914-6-chen.zhang@intel.com/T/
> > > Maybe introduce the libubpf.so as a subproject like libvfio-user.so is 
> > > more appropriate?
> > 
> > Fair comment. I never noticed them before, but why do we have those
> > submodules in the subprojects/ folder (libvduse, libvfio-user and
> > libvhost-user)? ... I don't think it's the job of QEMU to ship libraries
> > that a user might want to use for a certain feature, so could we please
> > remove those submodules again? If someone wants to use this, they can
> > compile the libraries on their own or help their favorite distribution to
> > ship them as packages.
> 
> FWIW, I don't really agree with shipping libvfio-user.so as a submodule
> either, but the consensus was that we have to do it because there's no
> stable ABI committed to by libvfio-user maintainers yet.  My counterpoint
> is that as long as QEMU ships libvfio-user as a submodule, there's no
> incentive to create a stable ABI, leaving a chicken & egg scenario.

It's weird that the parent lumps libvfio-user which is
a submodule with libvduse and libvhost-user which are not.
I don't know whether moving libvfio-user to avoid confusion
is justified.

-- 
MST