Re: [Qemu-devel] VMware Player

[Rick Vernam <rickv@hobi.com>]

QEMU leaves me with very few 'itches to be scratched' ...

The basic tasks that a QUI should confine itself to, IMO, are already pretty 
darn easy - define/manage a VM (via a shell script for me), start it, stop 
it, pause it...etc..

Even so, I've been thinking about this for some time - months probably...
What I'd develop, if I were to undertake such a task, is a very simple app 
that can start qemu according to some configuration, and simply hook into the 
monitor to issue such commands as sendkey, stop, cont ...etc ...

I do not imagine a need to have this app embed the qemu VM in itself, only 
start it & hook into the monitor.  Besides, I don't want to loose precious 
real estate - I like the window that a running VM is in just how it is - no 
changes.
I've used VMWare in the past a lot.  I found the toolbars & menus to be 
nothing more than clutter & annoyance.  The majority of the work I do with a 
VM has everything to do with the VM, and nothing to do with things that can 
be done with an additional GUI, however it would be nice to have one for 
simplifying those extra tasks...

Specifically, I imagine something sitting in my Sys. Tray.  This Sys. Tray 
icon menu thing would have options to invoke qemu's monitor commands for easy 
access ...or a list of all VMs, each with a sub-menu (I'm thinking stop, 
cont, loadvm, savevm, commit, usb stuff, change device x).
Also, I can use the Sys. Tray Icon to bring up it's window with all the 
niceties to create a new VM, manage existing VMs...etc.

Right now, I have a shell script that has the 'configuration' of my VM - 
changing of that 'configuration' would need to go in the GUI.

I also use the monitor thing for stop, cont, loadvm, startvm, commit, usb 
stuff & change device x - that would need to go in the GUI.

Beyond that, what does more bling really bring to the table?

On Thursday 15 June 2006 16:03, Joe Lee wrote:
> Johannes Schindelin wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> > On Thu, 15 Jun 2006, Joe Lee wrote:
> >> BTW, I am curious to know how much would it cost to develop a good
> >> GUI-Frontend for QEMU that would be comparable to VMware. How much man
> >> hours would this likely take?
> >
> > I do not know VMware. Anybody? I would be interested, too, to know how
> > complicated that frontend is... Should not be too difficult to reproduce
> > it in Tcl/Tk (with a proper Tcl script as config format).
> >
> > Ciao,
> > Dscho
>
> I am hoping some experience developers would comment on this!
> Joe
>
>
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