Re: [win-pv-devel] xenbus fails to load on Win7 x64

[Paul Durrant <Paul.Durrant@xxxxxxxxxx>]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: win-pv-devel [mailto:win-pv-devel-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On
> Behalf Of 'Marek Marczykowski-Górecki'
> Sent: 09 July 2018 15:06
> To: Paul Durrant <Paul.Durrant@xxxxxxxxxx>
> Cc: win-pv-devel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject: Re: [win-pv-devel] xenbus fails to load on Win7 x64
> 
> On Mon, Jul 09, 2018 at 10:34:03AM +0000, Paul Durrant wrote:
> > Ok. I thought all the xeniface APIs were present in 8.2.1. I see you've just
> posted a patch though.
> >
> > I'd prefer to keep master as Win8+ as I said before. So I'll spawn a 
> > staging-
> 8.3 branch for the purposes of backporting your xeniface patch for win7,
> rather than taking your win7 compatibility patches into master.
> 
> What is the policy about 8.2.x vs 8.3, and support for them? While
> adding a new feature looks more like 8.3 material, does it mean you'll
> need to support both 8.2 and 8.3? IMO, if you'd like to avoid it, one
> can argue the xencontrol patch doesn't touch any kernel side interface,
> so could be applied to 8.2 (8.2.2) without a risk for regression.

As a project we're lacking a support policy. I need to write one!

My aim is to support an OS, as far as bugfixes go, for its extended support 
lifetime or certainly as long as we are able to sign releases for it. So, the 
8.2 drivers will need to stick around until everything prior to Windows 8 is 
out of support.  At the moment we haven't retired any interface versions 
(except across the major release, which is intended to require a re-install of 
all drivers) but my plan is that interfaces can be retired 90 days after a 
newer version of an interface has been released. 

Given that, as you say, the kernel interfaces are unaffected by your patch then 
compatibility is not an issue anyway so releasing it in 8.2.2 does sound 
reasonable. Also, backporting the vs2017 tooling is a definitely a good idea if 
it can still be used to build for Windows 7. I'll try to do that a.s.a.p.

  Cheers,

    Paul

> 
> Do you think backporting vs2017 support would make sense too? Right now
> staging-8.2 branch is based on vs2013, but it isn't possible to download
> free version of it anymore...
> 
> --
> Best Regards,
> Marek Marczykowski-Górecki
> Invisible Things Lab
> A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
> Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?
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