Hi all I saw Dan Benamy's email recently about getting the kernel modules into Linux mainline, and by co-incidence I've been working on a cleanup for the last few weeks, since Greg K-H added it to linux-staging:
http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/gregkh/staging.git I've only looked at vmblock thus far, but I'm prepared to give the other modules similar treatment if it's seen as worthwhile. If vmblock is to be replaced with a FUSE alternative then obviously this patch is going to be academic, but at least it's given me a good insight into the amount of effort required. I haven't posted it to LKML yet but was thinking about doing it sometime soon as an RFC. The code is *substantially* reduced in size (one third of the original), I've stripped out all the backwards-compatibility and operating system independent stuff (otherwise it won't get past first base) and also made a large number of coding style changes to fit in with the kernel style. There's plenty more that could/should be done but at least it's now clean of all checkpatch and sparse warnings (there were getting on for a thousand). I haven't changed the CamelCase function names yet and doubtless that will be frowned upon. I did replace the custom double linked list implementation with the standard Linux kernel version, but otherwise it should be functionally identical to the original; I was careful to check the object code after each change and have tested that it works in VMware Player. The upshot is that it's so different from the original VMware source that it would probably be seen as a fork, so I'm not sure about its long-term viability. I guess if VMware or the open-vm-tools community are going to continue to develop the original code (for the benefit of other O/Ses and older Linux kernels) then that's cool but someone would have to merge those changes into mainline ongoing. Anyway if you want to have a look it's at: http://www.chrismalley.co.uk/patches/add-vmblock-driver.patch I have the individual commits in a git repository so will be able to do a patch series against -staging, but frankly the above is much easier for people who are new to the code to review. Comments welcome! cheers Chris Malley PS. I don't work for VMware, and this is an independent project not sponsored by my employer. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- This SF.Net email is sponsored by the Moblin Your Move Developer's challenge Build the coolest Linux based applications with Moblin SDK & win great prizes Grand prize is a trip for two to an Open Source event anywhere in the world http://moblin-contest.org/redirect.php?banner_id=100&url=/ _______________________________________________ open-vm-tools-devel mailing list open-vm-tools-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/open-vm-tools-devel
