I wanted to bring this topic out of a patch review thread. Dan recently stated that only patches that use "upstream" facilities are acceptable, meaning the xend delivered by XenSource. I'd like to make a few points on this note: 1. I'd like to hear from the other core maintainers if they agree with this rule. 2. I'd like to hear a rationale for this rule. 3. The Sun repository *is* the upstream for xend on Solaris for a number of reasons: a. The 3.1.x series is only maintained by us, there is no other 3.1 upstream b. The XenSource upstream does not, and cannot, work on Solaris c. XenSource have no interest in xend at all and it's effectively unmaintained (with the exception of Novell I think). 4. I've seen stated a number of times that libvirt is designed to avoid becoming a lowest common denominator interface. I cannot reconcile that claim with this rule: all xend implementations must apparently be the same, and no enhancements are allowed. 5. This rule further restricts innovation in that XenSource must agree to any changes. This has a rather obvious chilling effect. The distro type/variant recording changes are a perfect example: this is essential information, and recording it in xend was pre-NAKed by XenSource a long time ago. 6. As a thought experiment: if someone re-wrote xend in C, what then? Is that upstream, or not? In case it's not clear, all of Sun's Xen changes are open source and easily available. 7. Any change that involves *incompatibility* is clearly different, and IMHO not acceptable. This is only about changes that in no way negatively affect behaviour with an upstream Linux xend. 8. I hope it's clear to everyone that I'm motivated to merge changes upstream wherever feasible. I'm not seeking some kind of get-out clause from being a responsible maintainer. 9. Practically, we will have to carry these changes in our libvirt no matter what. I'd rather not. 10. I would note that Red Hat own the upstream for the code they care about, thus this rule can only cause trouble for other people. My personal opinion, not Sun's. regards, john -- Libvir-list mailing list Libvir-list@xxxxxxxxxx https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/libvir-list