Re: [qemu-web PATCH] Fix installation instructions for Debian/Ubuntu

[Thomas Huth <thuth@redhat.com>]

On 29/06/2023 10.12, Michael Tokarev wrote:
> 29.06.2023 11:02, Thomas Huth wrote:
>> There is no package called "qemu" here - thus use the two meta-packages
>> "qemu-system" and "qemu-user" instead.
> 
> There are 2 questions here.
> 
> 1. Do we really want to suggest users to install the whole thing?
> qemu-user and qemu-system are two entirely different beasts, used
> for entirely different purposes.  This is exactly the reason why
> I dropped `qemu' package from debian/ubuntu, - because effectively
> there are two independent, entirely different packages.
> 
> Also 1.a, - again, whole qemu-system usually isn't needed. There are
> another 2 big different classes here, - native thing (probably with
> kvm), and foreign thing.
> 
>> Resolves: https://gitlab.com/qemu-project/qemu-web/-/issues/8
> ..> -* <strong>Debian/Ubuntu:</strong> `apt-get install qemu`
>> +* <strong>Debian/Ubuntu:</strong> `apt-get install qemu-system qemu-user`
> 
> 2.  There are 2 qemu-user packages on debian/ubuntu: it is qemu-user
> and qemu-user-static. My guess is that most users actually need the latter,
> at least this one lets to run foreign chroots without copying anything from
> host system to a chroot.  In rare cases when one wants to install and run
> foreign binaries directly into the host system, qemu-user is okay. But it
> is a really rare case, and usually combined with running foreign chroots
> anyway.
> 
> So I'd say this whole thing needs a bit more explanation, like,
> 
>   when you want to run qemu-system emulation, install qemu-system 
> (meta)package.
>   when you want user-mode emulation, install qemu-user-static package.

Ok, thanks, makes sense, I sent a v2 where I've split it.

> This is actually a question to QEMU upstream, - I think the same reasoning
> applies there as well.

Looking at our docs, it seems like we're lacking an introduction to the the 
"configure" switches like --enable-system and --enable-user completely, 
indeed :-(

  Thomas