Re: [Xen-devel] [PATCH RFC 0/4] tools: Upstream blktap "2.5" as an external repo

[Jon Ludlam <jonathan.ludlam@xxxxxxxxxx>]

On Thu, Mar 26, 2015 at 12:46:06PM +0000, George Dunlap wrote:
> For some time, the blktap2 in-tree has bitrotted.  Many years ago the
> XenServer team at Citrix forked the code into a separate repository;
> several attempts have been made to upstream those changes back into
> Xen, to no avail.
> 
> The blktap code at the moment is the only source of performant vhd
> format integration.  It's additionally in use by projects like the
> COLO project.
> 
> This patch series removes the in-tree blktap2 code and treats the
> XenServer blktap tree as an upstream.  I've gotten agreement from the
> XenServer team to act as an upstream -- to accept patches fixing bugs,
> to help track down errors, and to attempt to help fix build breakages
> introduced by development.
> 
> At the moment we're using the "blktap2" branch of XenServer's
> blktap.git.  (This has been sometimes known as "blktap 2.5".)  This
> branch is maintianed in order to provide a buildroot for OpenStack,
> and has also been used by the CentOS xen packages for several years
> now.

It's probably worth mentioning again that there is a kernel patch
required. Some years ago I did some work to make the patch into a dkms
module, but since then the patch and the kernel have moved on and I
couldn't quite make it work any more; I'm afraid my kernel knowledge
is a bit lacking.

The current patches used in XenServer are on github here:
https://github.com/xenserver/linux-3.x.pg/tree/master/master

and the old dkms code is here:
https://github.com/xapi-project/blktap-dkms

In case anyone is interested...!

Jon

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