Re: [PATCH v3 00/38] tools: move most libraries into tools/libs

[Wei Liu <wl@xxxxxxx>]

On Sun, Aug 23, 2020 at 11:34:41AM +0200, Juergen Gross wrote:
> Move most remaining libraries under tools/libs, including libxenctrl
> and libxl. This is resulting in a lot of cleanup work regarding
> building libs and restructuring of the tools directory.
> 

One thing to point out is that libs was originally only supposed to be
the home for _stable_ libraries.

I have no objection to turning it into the home for all libraries
though. I think this series is definitely an improvement over the status
quo.

> After this huge cleanup all dependencies between libraries are defined
> in a single rather small file tools/libs/uselibs.mk, which is used to
> create the needed make variables and to control the stubdom build
> dependencies as well.
> 
> Another bonus of the rework is the automation of setting the versions
> of unstable libraries. This removes the need to bump those versions
> manually for each Xen release.
> 
> libfsimage is not moved by this series, as IMO there are some open
> questions:
> - should it really be unstable?
> - is the support of adding external fs-support used in practice, i.e.
>   shouldn't the fs-specific sub-libraries be just included into
>   libfsimage instead of being loaded dynamically?

My impression is that nowadays it is only consumed by pygrub, so it
wouldn't really make a difference if we make it stable or not. It surely
has not been changed for years though.

Not entirely sure why it is designed to load dynamically different
modules either. I don't have an opinion on this one way or another.

I think your energy will have better ROI if you spend it somewhere else
than trying to figure out definitive answers to these two questions.

Wei.