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Date: Tue, 29 Jul 2008 07:40:55 +0100
Subject: Re: [Qemu-devel] [PATCH] qcow3 - arbitrary metadata
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To: qemu-devel@nongnu.org

For what it's worth from an outsider, imho in-band singnalling (which is  
what arbitrary meta-data is) is bone-headed.

It's the same reason extended attributes are stupid.

You are going to poison your file format because you think command line  
arguments are cumbersome. You're then going to need a set of extra tools  
to modify said metadata, you wont be able to use the standard set of tools  
sed/grep/awk/ed to change them. You're going to have to add code to parse  
them and over-ride them; for what ? Because you think a script is untidy.

Plus, for all your talk about the subject you could have coded it up by  
now!

Plus la change.


Matt