[PATCH v6 13/21] gunyah: vm_mgr: Introduce basic VM Manager

[Arnd Bergmann]

On Fri, Nov 4, 2022, at 01:11, Elliot Berman wrote:
> On 11/2/2022 5:24 PM, Greg Kroah-Hartman wrote:
>> On Wed, Nov 02, 2022 at 11:45:12AM -0700, Elliot Berman wrote:
>>
>> Even if you don't support it 1:1, at least for the ones that are the
>> same thing, pick the same numbers as that's a nicer thing to do, right?
>> 
>
> Does same thing == interpretation of arguments is the same? For
> instance, GH_CREATE_VM and KVM_CREATE_VM interpret the arguments
> differently. Same for KVM_SET_USERSPACE_MEMORY. The high level 
> functionality should be similar for most all hypervisors since they will 
> all support creating a VM and probably sharing memory with that VM. The 
> arguments for that will necessarily look similar, but they will probably 
> be subtly different because the hypervisors support different features.

I think in the ideal case, you should make the arguments and the
command codes the same for any command where that is possible. If
you come across a command that is shared with KVM but just needs
another flag, that would involve coordinating with the KVM maintainers
about sharing the definition so the same flag does not get reused
in an incompatible way.

For commands that cannot fit into the existing definition, there
should be a different command code, using your own namespace and
not the 0xAE block that KVM has. It still makes sense to follow
the argument structure roughly here, unless there is a technical
reason for making it different.

> I don't think userspace that supports both KVM and Gunyah will benefit 
> much from re-using the same numbers since those re-used ioctl calls 
> still need to sit within the context of a Gunyah VM.

One immediate benefit is for tools that work on running processes,
such as strace, gdb or qemu-user. If they encounter a known command,
they can correctly display the arguments etc.

Another benefit is for sharing portions of the VMM that live in
outside processes like vhost-user based device emulation that
interacts with irqfd, memfd etc. The more similar the command
interface is, the easier it gets to keep these tools portable.

      Arnd