Re: [Qemu-devel] [PATCH] Add HTTP protocol using curl v2

[Jamie Lokier <jamie@shareable.org>]

Kevin Wolf wrote:
> If apps want to be sure that they are accessing a local file, they must
> ensure not to have a colon in the file name. Otherwise this specifies a
> protocol for the qemu block layer.
> 
> Btw, we could use a way to escape colons in a file name. Using such
> files isn't possible currently.

Escaping:

Because I'm not sure how QEMU parses colons, spaces, commas, quotes
and who knows what other special characters in these options, and
because the monitor might use different parsing when reading a disk
image name, my management scripts always create symlinks to the disks,
and pass the names of the symlinks instead to the command line and the
monitor.

It's quite awkward for qcow2 delta files, because they contain the
name of their backing file, it can be relative, cannot be overriden,
and is resolved relative to the management script's symlinks, and they
can be stacked more than one deep...  But most of the time it is
solvable by making a set of symlinks in a little directory hierarchy.

I'd be quite happy with file:///path/to/file%20containing%20spaces.vhd
working, on the command line and in the monitor, in the the way file
URIs are meant to work.

-- Jamie