On Fri, Aug 11, 2017 at 03:23:22PM +0200, Hans de Goede wrote: > Hello Greg, Arnd, Alexander, et al., > > Here is a first RFC version of my cleaned up version of the > VirtualBox vboxguest and vboxsf guest drivers. > > This is an RFC because there are still some checkpatch and other small > style issues which I need to fix. > > I'm posting this now because the majority of the major cleanup these 2 > drivers needed before being suitable for mainlining has been done now > and I believe the code is ready for a quick look by others (but not > ready yet for a full review). > > I've removed all depenencies on vbox's OO-independent runtime and > the runtime itself, reducing the vboxguest driver from 100000+ lines > of code to aprox. 6500 and the vboxsf driver from 60000 lines to 5000. > This reduces the non debug vboxguest.ko size from 450kB to less then 100 kB. > I've also cleaned up various other warts such as doing hardware init in > module_init rather then in a pci_probe callback. > > The vboxguest driver introduces a new userspace API + ABI in the form > of ioctls on a character device. VirtualBox upstream not willing to > commit to keeping this ABI stable was one of the things which has > kept this driver driver out of mainline sofar. I've been talking to > VirtualBox upstream about mainlining the guest drivers and VirtualBox > upstream has agreed to consider the userspace ABI stable and only > extend it in a backwards compatible manner. > > As said this is a RFC, the main comments I'm looking for is an answer > to these 2 questions: > > Greg, Arnd would you be willing to merge the vboxguest driver under > drivers/misc (in principle), assuming I do the remaining cleanup > and the driver gets a favorable review of course ? I have no objection to taking it there at all. thanks, greg k-h
