Hi all, I''ve taken a stab at documenting the current interface between netfront and netback drivers, here: http://wiki.xensource.com/xenwiki/XenNetFrontBackInterface Currently, the only way for non-Linux implementers to adhere to this interface is to study the Linux netfront driver, which has a great deal of optimizations and is not meant to be documentation. I''d love it if the experts in this area could help correct and fill-in the info there now, and hopefully we can end up with some useful docs. Thanks -- Andy _______________________________________________ Xen-devel mailing list Xen-devel@lists.xensource.com http://lists.xensource.com/xen-devel
On Mon, 2007-11-19 at 19:33 -0800, Andy Grover wrote:> Hi all, > > I''ve taken a stab at documenting the current interface between netfront > and netback drivers, here: > > http://wiki.xensource.com/xenwiki/XenNetFrontBackInterface > > Currently, the only way for non-Linux implementers to adhere to this > interface is to study the Linux netfront driver, which has a great deal > of optimizations and is not meant to be documentation. > > I''d love it if the experts in this area could help correct and fill-in > the info there now, and hopefully we can end up with some useful docs.Far from being an expert, a general question regarding present and future directions on documentation: The interface manual presently contains at least enough information to get people started. Personally, I would have gotten nowhere without that documentation, it''s still a fairly good starting point. So my question is: what will be the primary source of information for the future? I''m all for Wikis, but one might then as well consider moving the relevant chapters from the interface manual to wiki pages and proceed from that, rather than from scratch. To make me look helpful: I''ve got some pretty SVG figures, e.g. of the ring layout and high-level things like xenbus/netif/blkif between dom0/domU etc. on disk, which I could provide. Want some? regards, daniel -- Daniel Stodden LRR - Lehrstuhl für Rechnertechnik und Rechnerorganisation Institut für Informatik der TU München D-85748 Garching http://www.lrr.in.tum.de/~stodden mailto:stodden@cs.tum.edu PGP Fingerprint: F5A4 1575 4C56 E26A 0B33 3D80 457E 82AE B0D8 735B _______________________________________________ Xen-devel mailing list Xen-devel@lists.xensource.com http://lists.xensource.com/xen-devel
On Tue, 2007-11-20 at 05:22 +0100, Daniel Stodden wrote:> Far from being an expert, a general question regarding present and > future directions on documentation: The interface manual presently > contains at least enough information to get people started. Personally, > I would have gotten nowhere without that documentation, it''s still a > fairly good starting point. > > So my question is: what will be the primary source of information for > the future? I''m all for Wikis, but one might then as well consider > moving the relevant chapters from the interface manual to wiki pages and > proceed from that, rather than from scratch. > > To make me look helpful: I''ve got some pretty SVG figures, e.g. of the > ring layout and high-level things like xenbus/netif/blkif between > dom0/domU etc. on disk, which I could provide. Want some?Yes, I''m a little confused too. http://www.xen.org/xen/documentation.html lists only a user''s manual for Xen 3.0, but there''s also http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/research/srg/netos/xen/readmes/interface/ which seems quite nice, should it be linked to from the xen doc page? I think it still doesn''t go into quite the level of detail I''m after for netfront/netback -- it''s a start but we should shoot for interface spec be sufficiently detailed that a new netfront (or netback) could be written from it alone. BTW I just used the wiki because it was easiest scratchpad, I don''t know what the official position is on wiki vs. PDFs. Also, if you have SVGs I''d love to see them, definitely. Regards -- Andy _______________________________________________ Xen-devel mailing list Xen-devel@lists.xensource.com http://lists.xensource.com/xen-devel