Drafts

I'm saving some drafts here before including it on the wiki page. -Ehabkost (talk) 19:36, 16 January 2019 (UTC)

API documentation generation

Summary: Generation of API documentation from doc comments

QEMU currently has many functions documented using the GTK-Doc syntax, but there is no mechanism to actually generate API documentation from these doc comments. We need build rules that generate API documentation from C and Python source code.

Links:

Details:

Skill level: beginner
Language: C, Python
Mentor: Eduardo Habkost <ehabkost@redhat.com> ("ehabkost" on IRC)
Suggested by: Eduardo Habkost

Guest ABI automated testing

Summary: Automated test of Guest ABI and compatibility

QEMU tries to provide a stable guest ABI on versioned machine-types. Despite investing lots of effort keeping compatibility, we have no automated testing to detect common mistakes that break guest ABI. It should be possible to write automated test cases that will compare a virtual machine to a previously stored dump of guest ABI information.

A guest ABI dump may include, for example:

Data returned by CPUID instruction (or equivalent)
Physical memory and I/O port maps
Device addresses (PCI, USB, etc.)
Device IDs and other guest-visible device fields
Value of QOM properties that affect device behavior

This might require improving or adding new QMP commands to provide information to be validated by the automated test cases. Some test cases may use a custom kernel image for collecting guest-visible data, or extending the qtest protocol.

Links:

Details:

Skill level: intermediate
Language: C, Python
Mentor: Eduardo Habkost <ehabkost@redhat.com> ("ehabkost" on IRC)
Suggested by: Eduardo Habkost