Messages in this thread | | | Subject | Re: RFC: virtualbox tainting. | From | Valdis.Kletnieks@vt ... | Date | Fri, 07 Oct 2011 12:22:26 -0400 |
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On Fri, 07 Oct 2011 11:16:13 EDT, Josh Boyer said: > In all seriousness, is there a reason these modules haven't been > submitted to the staging tree? Perhaps this was attempted in the past > and I'm just not finding references to it.
I haven't actually checked what the churn rate of the kernel side of VirtualBox is, but there *is* some benefit if you have a package that includes both userspace and kernel code, to keep them in sync.
Currently, VirtualBox is at 4.1.4. Now, if they decide they need to change/fix/extend the API for some reason, they can just ship a 4.1.6 and be happy. If the code is in-tree, then they are basically stuck with the API - they can't ship a 4.1.6 that can get away with assuming that all the kernel API is there. So you have to carry around workarounds and test-for-features code and all that stuff.
I don't know - maybe the Oracle crew think the API is stable enough now that they can afford to do that. But Frank would probably be the one to speak to how in/out of tree would affect their development/support methodology.
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