Modifying the vboxguest ioctl API (Was: Re: [vbox-dev] [RFC] VGDrvCommonIoCtl: Add f32bit flag argument)

From: Hans de Goede
Date: Mon Aug 21 2017 - 08:48:09 EST


Hi,

On 14-08-17 14:19, Hans de Goede wrote:
Hi,

On 14-08-17 13:43, Knut St. Osmundsen wrote:
Hi Hans,

the other platforms also have KPIs or similar constructs for figuring
out whether the client process issuing the I/O controls is a 32-bit or
64-bit one. However, using the VBOXGUEST_IOCTL_FLAG set to 0 or 0x80 if
32-bit or 64-bit was a less complex (+faster(+safer)) way of deal with
this. The host driver does this as well. I would like the structure of
the two to be as similar as possible.

I'm not very keen to adding linux specific clutter (f32Bit + #ifndef
RT_OS_LINUX) to the common code just because you can do it differently
only Linux. Sorry. Want minimal platform specific cruft in common
code. Hope you understand.

OK and yes I understand.

PS. I noticed in the Linux kernel RFC email thread that we've agreed to
freeze the I/O control ABI. We cannot guarantee that's it's 100% frozen
at this point, since the generic status code fix (getting rid of that
ioctl non-zero return value) hasn't been done yet. I will see if I can
squeeze it in later this week.

I had already decided to just live with the positive return for vbox
host status codes, but if you want this changed for other reasons, then yes
now would be the time to do that. But you don't have to do it just on
my account.

I plan to post a v2 of the vboxguest driver for upstream tomorrow. Given
the above I will mark it as a RFC for now. Anychance you can wrap this up
soonish so that I can post a non RFC version with the final ABI upstream ?

Regards,

Hans