[libvirt] RFC: Drop unmaintained hv drivers? (phyp, xenapi, hyperv)

[Eduardo Otubo]

2016-04-15 21:54 GMT+02:00 Cole Robinson <crobinso at redhat.com>:
> Hi all,
>
> There's a few old hypervisor drivers in the tree that haven't been actively
> maintained for a long time. I'm curious if anyone knows of these drivers being
> actively used. If not I think we should consider dropping them
>
>
> src/phyp/ : for power VM hypervisor. Added in July 2009. The last commit that
> looks like it wasn't either internal API conversion, or caught by code
> analysis, is:
>
> commit 41461ff7f7d6ee6679aae2a8004e305c5830c9e8
> Author: Eduardo Otubo <otubo at linux.vnet.ibm.com>
> Date:   Tue Apr 19 12:34:08 2011 -0300
>
>     PHYP: Adding reboot domain function
>
>     Adding reboot <domain> function for pHyp driver.
>
> Nearly 5 years ago. Eduardo is the primary driver author too (CCd at his email
> from github).
>
> Searching the upstream bug tracker for all bugs with 'phyp', the only one
> that's actually about the phyp driver is a report from 2 years ago that it
> crashes trying to open a connection:
>
> https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1093094

I developed this driver as per internal IBM project's request. I left
IBM in 2014 and I really don't know if anyone uses this feature
(internally or not) anymore. I'll try to check it out and get back to
this thread as soon as I have some info.

Regards,

>
>
> src/xenapi/: Connecting to a xen api server. Added in March 2010. Largely
> appears to be a code drop, the original author/committer has never had another
> commit. The last xenapi specific commit seems to be:
>
> commit 484460ec4678a264c5e7355495c2f0da72cb42bd
> Author: Matthias Bolte <matthias.bolte at googlemail.com>
> Date:   Thu Jul 21 15:16:11 2011 +0200
>
>     xenapi: Improve error reporting in xenapiOpen once again
>
> Nearly 5 years ago. The only upstream bug that was filed about xenapi is:
>
> https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=711372
>
> Which was about a connection failure that was eventually fixed upstream, and
> dovetailed into the above referenced commit. Current xen guys, you know of
> anyone using this?
>
>
> src/hyperv/: Added in July 2011. This was largely a code drop as well;
> committed and patched a few times by Matthias but it was a university project
> by someone else. Last hyperv targeted patch was:
>
> commit 9e9ea3ead9825bd1dc2c17cea4abc8c4165591d0
> Author: Matthias Bolte <matthias.bolte at googlemail.com>
> Date:   Sun Sep 9 17:39:40 2012 +0200
>
>     hyperv: Fix and improve hypervListAllDomains
>
> The driver is fairly minimal as well: it can only list existing VMs and
> perform lifecycle operations. It can't create new VMs, and doesn't list VM
> device config AFAICT.
>
>
> Also, in general, I've never heard about anyone _actually_ using any of those
> drivers in the wild. There's reports here and there but it mostly sounds like
> people trying them out. Just an anecdote so take it with a grain of salt
>
> - Cole



-- 
otubo