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From: Juan Quintela <quintela@redhat.com>
In-Reply-To: <20090910120802.GA24530@redhat.com> (Michael S. Tsirkin's message
	of "Thu, 10 Sep 2009 15:08:03 +0300")
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Date: Thu, 10 Sep 2009 14:55:07 +0200
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Subject: [Qemu-devel] Re: The State of the SaveVM format
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To: "Michael S. Tsirkin" <mst@redhat.com>
Cc: Markus Armbruster <armbru@redhat.com>, qemu-devel@nongnu.org

"Michael S. Tsirkin" <mst@redhat.com> wrote:
> On Wed, Sep 09, 2009 at 09:02:07PM -0500, Anthony Liguori wrote:
>>>   If we complicate vmstate now to shoehorn pre-vmstate
>>> formats into vmstate, that ancient history will continue to haunt us.
>>> Complicating a program is far easier than the other direction.
>>>   
>>
>> Let's take it one step at a time.  There is an awful lot of areas where  
>> we can support older versions without adding complications.  Let's  
>> approach the complicated ones one at a time.
>
> I'm not sure I understand this talk about "pre-vmstate formats".
> I thought vmstate patches were, at least for the most part, trying
> to reimplement existing format with the table-driver design?
>
> If that's not so and we are changing the format now, is it too late to
> consider some standard serialization format rather than rolling our own?

We are using previous format.  At some point we should move to other
format.  When/what is still not decided.  Each time at its time.  Once
we have everything using vmstate, we have a declarative description of
the state.  Going for tables with names + types to any format is just an
exercise of walking the tables and writing a pretty-printer and a parser.

Later, Juan.