Re: [Qemu-devel] [PATCH] rev5: support colon in filenames

[Gerd Hoffmann <kraxel@redhat.com>]

On 07/15/09 17:14, Anthony Liguori wrote:
> Blue Swirl wrote:
>> I bet this won't compile on win32.
>>
>> Instead of this (IMHO doomed) escape approach, maybe the filename
>> parameter could be specified as the next argument, for example:
>> -hda format=qcow2,blah,blah,filename_is_next_arg -hda "filename with
>> funky characters like ',' ':' & '!'"
>
> -drive name=hda,if=ide,cache=off -hda foo.img
> -drive name=vda,if=virtio,cache=writeback -vda foo.img
> -drive name=sdb,if=scsi,unit=1 -sdb boo.img
>
> But Paul has long objected to having -vda or -sda syntaxes. I do agree
> though that the most sane thing to do is to make the filename an
> independent argument.

Jumping in here as I'm looking into this from the qdev-ifying point of 
view ;)

I'd like to move to a model where -drive adds host-side state only and
the actual disks are added via -device, i.e. something like

   -drive if=none,name=foo,file=/path/to/file
   -device virtio-blk-pci,drive=foo

Instead of using '-drive if=none' we could use some other syntax where 
the filename can be passed as separate argument.  Can switches have two 
arguments?  If so, maybe this:

   -hostdrive $file $options

comments?

cheers,
   Gerd