Re: [virtio] [PATCH 4/5] packed-ring: reposition drivernormative on driver notifications

["Michael S. Tsirkin" <mst@redhat.com>]

On Tue, Apr 10, 2018 at 04:59:12PM +0200, Halil Pasic wrote:
> My concern (regarding the whole spec) is the completeness and self
> the containment of it's normative portion -- I'm not sure if either is
> pursued rigorously.

No it isn't, and the reason is we do not want to bring the development
to a complete halt :). Our charter is

	Enhancing the performance of virtual devices by standardizing key
	features of the VIRTIO (Virtual I/O) Device Specification

Our job is thus to facilitate development by standardizing where it's
helpful.

If we start asking people to write out a formal spec for any tiny
change before they can release code, development will stop and
performance will suffer.

And it's a balance: it should be clear what is going on,
and if people can write it rigorously without confusing
matters, it is helpful.

But we don't want something like e.g. the C or C++ language spec,
where you can read all of it and still have no idea how to use it.

> For instance take 'Supplying Buffers to The
> Device' either for split or for packed. The algorithms described
> there aren't constituting a normative section. Do you think these
> can be inferred from the normative sections?

No but it's ok for normative sections to refer to the non-normative
ones.


-- 
MST