From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: from mailman by lists.gnu.org with tmda-scanned (Exim 4.43) id 1JwJj0-0002ox-Uc for qemu-devel@nongnu.org; Wed, 14 May 2008 12:21:07 -0400 Received: from exim by lists.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.43) id 1JwJj0-0002oh-BG for qemu-devel@nongnu.org; Wed, 14 May 2008 12:21:06 -0400 Received: from [199.232.76.173] (port=41288 helo=monty-python.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1JwJj0-0002oe-44 for qemu-devel@nongnu.org; Wed, 14 May 2008 12:21:06 -0400 Received: from mx1.redhat.com ([66.187.233.31]:53914) by monty-python.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.60) (envelope-from ) id 1JwJj0-0007f2-5I for qemu-devel@nongnu.org; Wed, 14 May 2008 12:21:06 -0400 Received: from int-mx1.corp.redhat.com (int-mx1.corp.redhat.com [172.16.52.254]) by mx1.redhat.com (8.13.8/8.13.8) with ESMTP id m4EGL5Fr020617 for ; Wed, 14 May 2008 12:21:05 -0400 Received: from file.fab.redhat.com (file.fab.redhat.com [10.33.63.6]) by int-mx1.corp.redhat.com (8.13.1/8.13.1) with ESMTP id m4EGL4KD006543 for ; Wed, 14 May 2008 12:21:04 -0400 Received: (from berrange@localhost) by file.fab.redhat.com (8.13.1/8.13.1/Submit) id m4EGL3Ef008250 for qemu-devel@nongnu.org; Wed, 14 May 2008 17:21:03 +0100 Date: Wed, 14 May 2008 17:21:03 +0100 From: "Daniel P. Berrange" Subject: Re: [kvm-devel] [Qemu-devel] Re: [PATCH] Add support for a configuration file Message-ID: <20080514162103.GJ15783@redhat.com> References: <1210713545-11916-1-git-send-email-aliguori@us.ibm.com> <482ABF6E.6090100@qumranet.com> <482ADA80.3000309@bellard.org> <200805141526.34293.paul@codesourcery.com> <90eb1dc70805140745t61c01ee6w1d9478b02bce3e03@mail.gmail.com> <90eb1dc70805140830w76ed3b17v92f66be45b1845e0@mail.gmail.com> <532499CF-FC49-4C71-85B3-60931E5AB700@web.de> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <532499CF-FC49-4C71-85B3-60931E5AB700@web.de> Reply-To: "Daniel P. Berrange" , qemu-devel@nongnu.org List-Id: qemu-devel.nongnu.org List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , To: qemu-devel@nongnu.org On Wed, May 14, 2008 at 06:01:43PM +0200, Andreas F?rber wrote: > > Am 14.05.2008 um 17:30 schrieb Javier Guerra: > > >personally, i find shell scripts enough for setting up parameters. a > >static config wouldn't bring much advantages. > > For personal use they are okay, but for distributing a machine, you > may need two or three platform-specific scripts for QEMU, or even > worse one config file per frontend. > > VMware has the advantage of allowing to distribute one .vmx file along > with the image to facilitate its use. QEMU users can be happy if a raw > or qcow2 image is provided at all and then need to figure out useful > command line parameters (and whether to use qemu or qemu-system-x86_64 > or whichever). Re-distribution of virtual machine images is a problem that's tangential to configuration file. There is alot of data you want in the configuration file for a specific deployment of a VM, that is simply not relevant or desired when distributing appliances. As such you don't typically want to simply distribute the config file. Furthermore, the format for distributing appliances can & shouuld be independant of the virtualization technology used for a specific deployment. So an appliance format would specify *requirements*, eg a virtualization product capable of fully virtualizing a x86_64 CPU. The tool to deploy an instace of the appliance examines the requirements to decide hwo to satisfy them, eg it might decide qemu-system-x86_64 will do, or it might decide to use 'kvm' instead. You simply do not want to tie the deployment configuration to the metadata for redistribution. It happened to more or less work for VMWare with VMDK and VMX file, only because VMWare were the only game in town with no real widely deployed alternatives. That time has passed. Dan. -- |: Red Hat, Engineering, Boston -o- http://people.redhat.com/berrange/ :| |: http://libvirt.org -o- http://virt-manager.org -o- http://ovirt.org :| |: http://autobuild.org -o- http://search.cpan.org/~danberr/ :| |: GnuPG: 7D3B9505 -o- F3C9 553F A1DA 4AC2 5648 23C1 B3DF F742 7D3B 9505 :|