From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: from mailman by lists.gnu.org with tmda-scanned (Exim 4.43) id 1D6TWS-0002EH-6P for qemu-devel@nongnu.org; Wed, 02 Mar 2005 08:04:16 -0500 Received: from exim by lists.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.43) id 1D6TWL-00029e-BS for qemu-devel@nongnu.org; Wed, 02 Mar 2005 08:04:10 -0500 Received: from [199.232.76.173] (helo=monty-python.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1D6TWK-00024c-Uq for qemu-devel@nongnu.org; Wed, 02 Mar 2005 08:04:08 -0500 Received: from [193.96.240.2] (helo=br2uxs04.hb.orthogon.com) by monty-python.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.34) id 1D6TDR-0003xc-Rh for qemu-devel@nongnu.org; Wed, 02 Mar 2005 07:44:38 -0500 Received: from br2uxs03.hb.orthogon.com (br2uxs03.hb.orthogon.com [150.158.146.28]) by br2uxs04.hb.orthogon.com (8.11.7+Sun/8.8.8/Ortho-4.10) with ESMTP id j22Ciak21527 for ; Wed, 2 Mar 2005 13:44:36 +0100 (MET) Received: from [150.158.146.126] (br2wsl15.hb.orthogon.com [150.158.146.126]) by br2uxs03.hb.orthogon.com (8.8.8+Sun/8.8.8/Ortho-4.10) with ESMTP id NAA17547 for ; Wed, 2 Mar 2005 13:44:36 +0100 (MET) Message-ID: <4225B533.2030801@gmx.de> Date: Wed, 02 Mar 2005 13:44:35 +0100 From: Oliver Gerlich MIME-Version: 1.0 Subject: Re: [Qemu-devel] Qemu Guest Tools References: <4912.1109718464@www32.gmx.net> <20050302013220.GA28323@jbrown.mylinuxbox.org> In-Reply-To: <20050302013220.GA28323@jbrown.mylinuxbox.org> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit 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 Jim C. Brown wrote: > On Wed, Mar 02, 2005 at 12:07:44AM +0100, olig9@gmx.de wrote: > >>Hello, >>to enable copying of text between Qemu host and guest, I've started to write >>some small apps called QGT (Qemu Guest Tools). A very early version is >>available at http://www.oliver-gerlich.de/qemu/ . Please have a look at it >>and tell me your opinion. >> >>Oliver Gerlich >> >>-- >>DSL Komplett von GMX +++ Superg?nstig und stressfrei einsteigen! >>AKTION "Kein Einrichtungspreis" nutzen: http://www.gmx.net/de/go/dsl >> > > > This is promising, but I think it is badly named. This looks likes that it could, > in theory, work across actual networks. There is another program which can be > used to share clipboards across networks, and it can be used from within qemu. > It can support multple workstations at once and it supports more OSes. > > Looks good for a first version though. What other features are you planning > to add? Planned features are: -Notification of guest when it is loaded with loadvm -Time synchronisation between host and guest (currently guest time is wrong when loadvm is used) -drag and drop (Mark mentioned it, and it was also posted on the forum some days ago) -make mouse grabbing more comfortable Copy/paste and time sync could be done by external programs (Joshua mentioned mpcb; ntp, ...). But drag and drop requires access to the Qemu window, and loadvm notification requires some kind of integration with Qemu. Currently it's indeed only a bad version of mpcb :) but I hope it will evolve in another direction (copy and paste being just a small part of its features). > > The project shouldn't be called Qemu Guest Tools unless it requires qemu, IMHO. > (Guest tools have been discussed before, some ideas for communication to qemu > itself would be via 'special' qemu specific instructions or alloting an io port > to give commands to qemu (this is what VMware does). Some ideas that have been > proposed to use this communication for: host-guest clipboard, accelerated > graphics support (such as 3d), a sort of two-way user-net (allow the host and > other workstations to see the guest w/o going thru tuntap ... not sure how > this would work). The list can get quite fancy.) > I've decided against some special i/o port or such because I don't know anything about these things :) and because it would require a driver on the guest side (is that correct?). TCP/IP drivers are available for many platforms, and I think if an OS doesn't support TCP/IP it doesn't really matter if copy/paste doesn't work. Accelerated graphics would be nice indeed, but shouldn't that be done in a separate driver? Not sure if such an optional user-space application is the right place for this. After all, QGT should just be a collection of those features that cannot be integrated into a hardware+driver (which is generally a cleaner way). Thanks for your input, Oliver Gerlich