On 09/19/2013 09:48 PM, Jeff Cody wrote:
> For image formats that are not "QEMU native", but supported for
> compatibility, it is useful to verify that an image created with
> the 'gold standard' native tool can be read / written to successfully
> by QEMU.
> 
> In addition to testing non-native images, this could also be useful to
> test against image files created by older versions of QEMU.
> 
> This provides a directory to store small sample images, for use by
> scripts in tests/qemu-iotests.
> 
> The MANIFEST file should be updated when a new image is added to the
> directory, to give some idea about the nature of the image and the
> data store therein.
> 
> Image files should be compressed with bzip2.

Why bzip2?  xz beats bzip2 in both compression ratio and decompression
speed; or if you are worried about portability, gzip is present on more
machines.  bzip2 will probably be around for some time, but it is no
longer the compression engine of choice.

-- 
Eric Blake   eblake redhat com    +1-919-301-3266
Libvirt virtualization library http://libvirt.org