Re: [Qemu-devel] [PATCH] pc: rename machine types

["Daniel P. Berrange" <berrange@redhat.com>]

On Tue, Jan 08, 2013 at 10:16:25AM -0600, Anthony Liguori wrote:
> Gerd Hoffmann <kraxel@redhat.com> writes:
> 
> > On 01/08/13 14:57, Anthony Liguori wrote:
> >> Gerd Hoffmann <kraxel@redhat.com> writes:
> >> 
> >>> Starting with release 1.4 we have a fully functional q35 machine type,
> >>> i.e. "qemu -M q35" JustWorks[tm].  Update machine type names to reflect
> >>> that:
> >>>
> >>>   * pc-1.4 becomes piix-1.4
> >> 
> >> PIIX is the southbridge.  A more appropriate (and google-able) name
> >> would be i440fx-1.4.
> >
> > Fine with me.
> >
> >>>   * q35-next becomes q35-1.4
> >> 
> >> I can't help but bikeshed a little here.  I dislike that we are going
> >> from something that's reasonable understandable (pc) to something
> >> completely obscure (piix and q35).
> >
> > 'pc' is pretty generic.  I want discontinue it, except for aliasing 'pc'
> > to the default machine type, for compatibility reasons.
> >
> > I don't care that much what the actual names are.  Using piix + q35 is
> > inconsistent, so it isn't that a good choice indeed.  So what now?
> >
> >   (1) We could go for the host bridge and use 'i440fx' + 'q35'.
> >   (2) We could go for the south bridge and use 'piix' + 'ich9'.

Either of these sound fine to me, with a slight preference for the
first option.

> >   (3) Something different?

If we really want 'pc' in the name, then

(4) pci440fx & pcq35
(5) pcpiix &  pcich9

> The issue I have with 'i440fx' and 'q35' is that it's basically
> gibberish to a non-QEMU developer.

With my users and/or libvirt developers hat on, I don't agree really.
What Gerd suggests clearly states the hardware type being used by the
machine. I think 'pc' is pretty much meaningless as a machine name
because it can mean pretty much anything you want to it. It is akin
to just calling your network device 'nic' and your disk device 'disk',
which QEMU doesn't do for obvious reasons.

What if someone can along and implemented a bunch more machine types
for x86 ? Any name based soly on 'pc' would be even more meaningless
than it already is. IMHO including the actual hardware name in some
form is the right way to distinguish this.

Daniel
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