"Michael S. Tsirkin" <[email protected]> writes: > On Wed, May 27, 2026 at 10:13:47AM +0100, Alex Bennée wrote: >> >> Hi, >> >> Apologies for the wide cross-posting but I wanted to find as many >> interested parties as possible. >> >> The vhost-user specification currently lives in the main qemu >> repository (docs/interop/vhost-user.rst) mainly due to historical >> reasons. QEMU was one of the first VMMs to implement vhost-user and the >> spec needed to live somewhere. >> >> However there are now vhost-user implementations for QEMU, rust-vmm, >> cloud hypervisor and I think CrosVM. We get queries about changing or >> updating the spec on qemu-devel from time to time and I feel that given >> it is an interoperability specification we should think about hosting >> it and its discussions elsewhere. >> >> I think broadly there are 4 options: >> >> * Move into the OASIS VirtIO group as an appendix/addendum to the main >> VirtIO spec. >> >> This probably brings the widest visibility to changes to those that >> might be affected. However it does come with a certain amount of >> bureaucracy with the OASIS process where only members can vote on >> changes. While intimately tied to VirtIO it's concerns are more >> focused on practical implementation details of the IPC between VMMs >> and device backends. >> >> * Move to a separate project under the qemu-project space. >> >> QEMU hosts a number of sub-projects and mirrors so it would be easy >> enough to split the spec into its own repo. Changes to the >> specification could then be divorced from QEMU's release cycle and >> at the maintainers option issues and merging strategies could be >> configured for just the specification. >> >> * Create a new project just for vhost-user >> >> The interested parties could decide where to host (github, gitlab, >> forgejo, whatever..) and decide to move away from mailing lists >> altogether or create a mailing list but manage changes via the forge >> interface. >> >> * Status quo >> >> Just keep the spec where it is and muddle through as before. Maybe >> we could improve the contribution documentation for how and when >> changes are discussed. >> >> Any thoughts? >> >> -- >> Alex Bennée >> Virtualisation Tech Lead @ Linaro > > I think what is missing here is what are the pros for any of the > proposed changed? What are the issues we are trying to solve? > What 'queries about changing or updating the spec' were problematic?
I was referring to: https://lore.kernel.org/qemu-devel/[email protected] when Demi proposed discussing at the QEMU/KVM community call meeting and it occurred to me changes to vhost-user affect more than QEMU these days. > > Thanks, -- Alex Bennée Virtualisation Tech Lead @ Linaro
