From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: from mailman by lists.gnu.org with tmda-scanned (Exim 4.43) id 1Lco5H-0002mY-Q9 for qemu-devel@nongnu.org; Thu, 26 Feb 2009 16:47:59 -0500 Received: from exim by lists.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.43) id 1Lco5F-0002jw-TW for qemu-devel@nongnu.org; Thu, 26 Feb 2009 16:47:59 -0500 Received: from [199.232.76.173] (port=40861 helo=monty-python.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1Lco5F-0002jV-IM for qemu-devel@nongnu.org; Thu, 26 Feb 2009 16:47:57 -0500 Received: from mail2.shareable.org ([80.68.89.115]:43159) by monty-python.gnu.org with esmtps (TLS-1.0:RSA_AES_256_CBC_SHA1:32) (Exim 4.60) (envelope-from ) id 1Lco5F-0005lG-3l for qemu-devel@nongnu.org; Thu, 26 Feb 2009 16:47:57 -0500 Received: from jamie by mail2.shareable.org with local (Exim 4.63) (envelope-from ) id 1Lco5C-0003lV-An for qemu-devel@nongnu.org; Thu, 26 Feb 2009 21:47:54 +0000 Date: Thu, 26 Feb 2009 21:47:54 +0000 From: Jamie Lokier Subject: Re: [Qemu-devel] Machine description, an alternativ using XML Message-ID: <20090226214754.GB14149@shareable.org> References: <20090226093640.GA413@shareable.org> <1235654689.5894.132.camel@ecrins.fosdick.home.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Disposition: inline Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit In-Reply-To: Reply-To: 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 Andreas Färber wrote: > >XML already has a way of describing objects (elements) attributes of > >those objects (attributes) and objects nested within those objects > >(nested elements). > > True, but XML itself does not allow for arbitrary graphs, only trees. > Unless of course you start using RDF/etc., and then it's no longer a > small expat dependency only. Many things are naturally tree shaped most of the time, which avoids the need to invent names for everything when you don't need to, and keeps the text compact and clear for human editing. Otherwise, graph relationships are easily expressed with id="myname" in one place and ref="myname" in the other place. (Think like HTML anchors). That's useful anyway for clarity sometimes. > As a user I do prefer easily readable XML formats, like Virtual PC or > VMware may use, but I understand that such PC-only formats do not > provide enough flexibility to customize a full OF device tree for all > the platforms and devices QEMU supports. Having a frontend tool to > generate a machine configuration from another config file format > seemed like the best compromise when we last discussed the topic. I don't see what's PC-only about that _style_ of config file, or why it wouldn't provide the flexibility. Obviously VMware and Virtual PC's exact format is PC-only, but it doesn't make sense to mimic them exactly. -- Jamie