RFC: top level compatibles for virtual platforms
Scott Wood
scottwood at freescale.com
Tue Jul 12 02:24:18 EST 2011
On Mon, 11 Jul 2011 10:45:47 -0500
Timur Tabi <timur at freescale.com> wrote:
> >> Also, if these are KVM creations, shouldn't there be a "kvm" in the compatible string
> >> somewhere?
> >
> > There is nothing KVM specific about these platforms. Any hypervisor
> > could create a similar virtual machine.
>
> True, but I think we're on a slippery slope, here. Virtualization allows us to
> create "virtual platforms" that are not well defined. Linux requires a unique
> compatible string for each platform.
The device tree is supposed to describe the hardware (virtual or
otherwise), not just supply what Linux wants. Perhaps there simply
shouldn't be a toplevel compatible if there's nothing appropriate to
describe there -- and fix whatever issues Linux has with that.
> I guess my point is back to the name "corenet". That just doesn't mean anything
> to me, and I don't think it means much to anyone else, either. That's why I
> think that maybe "kvm" should be in the string, to at least indicate that it's a
> virtualized environment.
But what about this is specific to kvm (the actual hypervisor info is
already described in /hypervisor)? Then we'll have to add a platform match
for every other hypervisor out there that does the same thing.
-Scott
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