Re: Contributions: Adding New Devices

[Philippe Mathieu-Daudé]

On 7/1/21 9:48 PM, Connor Kuehl wrote:
> On 6/30/21 7:01 AM, Federico Vaga wrote:
>> Hello,
>>
>> I can't find this information on the website, so here I am.
>>
>> I developed a QEMU device that virtualises a PCI card that we widely use at 
>> CERN.

What kind of device is it? You might be surprise to see later someone
else interested in what your specific device does and reuse part of it.

Is the datasheet/documentation public?

Can you provide test? (so it doesn't bitrot while we do code changes
unrelated to your device code)

>> But this card is only used at CERN.
>>
>> Clearly, having CERN specific devices in QEMU does not help much the qemu
>> community, hence I maintain an internal QEMU fork.
>>
>> But, I was wondering what is the QEMU policy about contributions that are 
>> known to be
>> used only by a handful of people (one organization in this case)? Are they 
>> accepted?
> 
> Your first instinct is correct that it's unlikely that the community
> will be able to maintain a device if it's really so niche as to only
> be used at your organization.
> 
> However, if you do decide to try to upstream it, it could only help
> your chances if you or some of your colleagues agreed to maintain it
> for the QEMU community. This mainly involves adding an entry to the
> MAINTAINERS file where, if accepted, the expectation is that you'll
> be reachable within reason to review patches, make pull requests,
> help discuss bugs in the subsystem, etc.

As Connor said (although you probably won't have to worry about
pull request burden, other will help you while you ramp up).
Beside, code only usable by you shouldn't have a lot of traffic,
so maintenance shouldn't take too much.

Regards,

Phil.