Re: [Qemu-devel] [PATCH v3 2/2] smbios: Set system manufacturer, product & version by default

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

On Wed, Oct 30, 2013 at 03:48:55PM +0100, Markus Armbruster wrote:
> "Michael S. Tsirkin" <mst@redhat.com> writes:
> 
> > On Wed, Oct 30, 2013 at 01:56:40PM +0100, armbru@redhat.com wrote:
> >> From: Markus Armbruster <armbru@redhat.com>
> >> 
> >> Currently, we get SeaBIOS defaults: manufacturer Bochs, product Bochs,
> >> no version.  Best SeaBIOS can do, but we can provide better defaults:
> >> manufacturer QEMU, product & version taken from QEMUMachine desc and
> >> name.
> >> 
> >> Take care to do this only for new machine types, of course.
> >> 
> >> Signed-off-by: Markus Armbruster <armbru@redhat.com>
> >
> > I feel applying this one would be a mistake.
> >
> > Machine desc is for human readers.
> > For example, it currently says "Standard PC (Q35 + ICH9, 2009)"
> > but if we add a variant with IDE compatibility mode we will likely want to
> > tweak it to say "Standard PC (Q35 + ICH9/AHCI mode, 2009)"
> > and add another one saying ""Standard PC (Q35 + ICH9/compat mode,
> > 2009)".
> >
> > In other words we want the ability to tweak
> > description retroactively, and exposing it to guest will
> > break this ability.
> 
> These will be new machine types, won't they?

Description is there for humans, so we should be free to change
it to make it more readable for old types, too.

> > So we really need a new field not tied to the human description.
> 
> The SMBIOS string is *also* for human readers.
> 
> I can't see why we should jump through hoops *now* to separate the two.
> The values are the same.  I don't expect us to change them for old
> machine types.  But if we ever feel the need to change them in one place
> but not the other, nothing will prevent us from splitting them up then.
> 
> Pay as you go, not pay as you fear you might have to go some day.