Subject: Re: [RFC PATCH 0/5] Removing support for 32bit KVM/arm host

From: Daniel Golle <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 18 Feb 2020 22:37:12 +0100

> Message-ID: <[email-masked]>
> 
> KVM/arm was merged just over 7 years ago, and has lived a very quiet
> life so far. It mostly works if you're prepared to deal with its
> limitations, it has been a good prototype for the arm64 version,
> but it suffers a few problems:
> 
> - It is incomplete (no debug support, no PMU)
> - It hasn't followed any of the architectural evolutions
> - It has zero users (I don't count myself here)

Not true. At least I'm using KVM on CortexA7 (sun7i aka. Allwinner A20)
and it has been quite useful until now (running low memory footprint
OpenWrt-based guests on yocto/OpenEmbedded host)

> - It is more and more getting in the way of new arm64 developments

Can you elaborate more on how it is getting in the way? Just in terms
of effort to maintain the necessary abstractions or does something
really block ARM64 KVM support?

> 
> So here it is: unless someone screams and shows that they rely on
> KVM/arm to be maintained upsteam, I'll remove 32bit host support
> form the tree. One of the reasons that makes me confident nobody is
> using it is that I never receive *any* bug report. Yes, it is perfect.
> But if you depend on KVM/arm being available in mainline, please shout.

I cetainly don't depend on it, meaning I'd have to replace hardware
worth less than $100 in the near future, that's not too bad.
And yes, it has just been working perfectly ;)

Cheers

Daniel

_______________________________________________
linux-arm-kernel mailing list
[email-masked]
http://lists.infradead.org/mailman/listinfo/linux-arm-kernel