Re: big-endian support for libvirt - introduce GUEST_HANDLE infrastructure ?

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Christian Ehrhardt wrote:
Now look at the padding in e.g. xen_v2s3_getdomaininfolistop: it
       doesn't work on big-endian systems. This problem is why the
       GUEST_HANDLE infrastructure is present in Xen. To work on
       big-endian systems, libvirt will need this or a similar mechanism.

Understood.

--- Current Questions ---
We could now add several ugly ifdefs to libvirt code to differentiate powerpc from the others and solve the issue described above, but I think thats not a good solution. The GUEST_HANDLE mechanism would provide an architecture abstraction and is already implemented/working in libxc. The question is, shouldn't libvirt actually use the GUEST_HANDLE mechanism like libxc does (at least for the _v2d5_ structures) or are there big arguments against it? I would create a patch to add the GUEST_HANDLE stuff in libvirt if there is nothing against it, but I will need some help to test it on x86/x86_64/ia64 since I have no such machines here. If there is a major reason against the GUEST_HANDLE code, are there other suggestions/preferences how to solve this?

I had a look at the GUEST_HANDLE code in libxc (specifically arch-powerpc.h vs arch-x86_{32,64}.h) and it looks as if something like this should go into libvirt. I would just be careful about copying the code verbatim because libvirt & libxc are under slightly different licenses.

As for testing: we have no 64 bit PPC machines at all available for us to use that I'm aware of. We have plenty of i386 & x86-64, and one or two IA64 machines.

Thanks for your analysis.

Rich.

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