Re: [Qemu-devel] [PATCH] qcow3 - arbitrary metadata

[Anthony Liguori <anthony@codemonkey.ws>]

Paul Brook wrote:
>> Ease of use primarily.  Take the case of a VM appliance.  I would build a
>> VM appliance and in the metadata I would put:
>> 1. My company's logo (which would show up as the icon on the file in any
>> file browser)
>> 2. All the correct config for how to make the VM implementation start this
>> image
>> 3. A first-run startup message with instructions
>> 4. A click-through license agreement
>>
>> The user would download and double-click a single file and the VM would
>> start up, ask me to agree to a license, provide me the instructions on how
>> to begin and just start running.
>>     
>
> This is already broken because you're assuming a suitable version of qemu is 
> preinstalled on the user's machine.  Once you have to install qemu, you can 
> just as easily install a frontend to provide whatever user interface you 
> want.
>   

If you want to distribute an appliance as a single image and you want to 
be able to instantly use it, I think you need something like an offset= 
parameter for the -drive option.

If you put everything in a tarball/zip file, you have to extract it 
first.  You can make it a single-click operation, but you'll still have 
to wait for the disk to be extracted.

I don't think it's a strong enough use-case to warrant a whole new disk 
format, but some trickery with the current format could suffice.

Regards,

Anthony Liguori

> All modern filesystems have things called "directories" or "folders" than be 
> be used to group sets of related files.
>
> Paul
>
>
>