Re: [PATCH 0/6] xsm: refactoring xsm hooks

[Jan Beulich <jbeulich@xxxxxxxx>]

On 18.06.2021 12:14, Andrew Cooper wrote:
> On 18/06/2021 00:39, Daniel P. Smith wrote:
>> Based on feedback from 2021 Xen Developers Summit the xsm-roles RFC
>> patch set is being split into two separate patch sets. This is the first
>> patch set and is focused purely on the clean up and refactoring of the
>> XSM hooks.
>>
>> This patch set refactors the xsm_ops wrapper hooks to use the 
>> alternative_call
>> infrastructure. Then proceeds to move and realign the headers to remove the
>> psuedo is/is not enable implementation. The remainder of the changes are 
>> clean up
>> and removing no longer necessary abstractions.
>>
>> <snip>
>>  51 files changed, 1309 insertions(+), 1413 deletions(-)
> 
> The diffstat is great, but sadly CI says no. 
> https://gitlab.com/xen-project/patchew/xen/-/pipelines/323044913
> 
> The problem is that ARM doesn't have alternative_vcall().  Given how
> much of an improvement this ought to be for hypercalls, I don't want to
> lose the vcalls.
> 
> One option is to implement vcall() support on ARM, but that will leave
> new architectures (RISC-V on the way) with a heavy lift to get XSM to
> compile.
> 
> Instead, what we want to do is make vcall() a common interface, falling
> back to a plain function pointer call for architectures which don't
> implement the optimisation.  So something like:
> 
> 1) Introduce CONFIG_HAS_VCALL, which is selected by X86 only right now
> 2) Introduce xen/vcall.h which uses CONFIG_HAS_VCALL to either include
> asm/vcall.h or provide the fallback implementation

A word on the suggested names: The 'v' in alternative_vcall() stands for
"returning void", as opposed to alternative_call(). It's unclear to me
what you see it stand for in the names you propose.

Jan