On 5/18/07, Anthony Liguori <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > I also > > am not sure the socket system call interface is quite what we want, > > although it's a neat idea. It's also not that portable outside the > > "everything is a Linux variant" world. > > A filesystem interface certainly isn't very portable outside the POSIX > world :-)
Actually, it probably the most portable thing you can have. > The interface you're proposing is almost functionally identical to a > socket. In fact, once you open /data you've got an fd that you interact > with in the same way as you would interact with a socket. Well, sure, I stole the interface from Plan 9, and they use this interface to do sockets, among *many* other things -- and there's the point. The interface is not just sockets. But if you're used to sockets, it looks familiar. I only steal from the best :-) Note, btw, that the fd has a path, and can be examined easily, and also passed to other programs for use. That's messy and ugly with sockets. > > It's not that there's an unique value for this sort of interface in > virtualization; I don't think you're making that argument. Instead, > you're making a general argument as to why this way of doing things is > better than what Unix has been doing forever (with things like > sockets) Yes, Unix has been "doing it this way" forever. The interface I am proposing was the one designed by the Unix guys -- once they realized how deficient the Unix way of doing things had become. But, forgetting all this argument, it still seems to me that the file system interface is far simpler than a socket interface. No binary structures. No new sockaddr structures needed. No alignment/padding rules. You can actually set up a link from a shell script, or perl, or python, or whatever, without a special set of bindings. > A socket interface would provide a simple, well-understood interface > that few people in the Linux community would disagree with (it's already > there for s390). Yes, but ... well understood to the Linux community. Can we look at a broader scope? We've got a golden opportunity here to build a really flexible VMIC interface. I would hate to lose it. Anyway, thanks for discussing this. ron ------------------------------------------------------------------------- This SF.net email is sponsored by DB2 Express Download DB2 Express C - the FREE version of DB2 express and take control of your XML. No limits. Just data. Click to get it now. http://sourceforge.net/powerbar/db2/ _______________________________________________ kvm-devel mailing list kvm-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/kvm-devel
