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Date: Wed, 14 May 2008 14:26:40 +0200
From: Fabrice Bellard <fabrice@bellard.org>
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Subject: Re: [Qemu-devel] Re: [PATCH] Add support for a configuration file
References: <1210713545-11916-1-git-send-email-aliguori@us.ibm.com>	<482A1F1C.2020902@codemonkey.ws>
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To: Avi Kivity <avi@qumranet.com>, qemu-devel@nongnu.org
Cc: kvm-devel@lists.sourceforge.net, Anthony Liguori <aliguori@us.ibm.com>, Paul Brook <paul@codesourcery.com>

Avi Kivity wrote:
> Fabrice Bellard wrote:
>>
>> I prefer:
>>
>> drive.file=foo.img
>> drive.if=scsi
>>
> 
> That doesn't support multiple drives very well.

Right, I realized it afterwards !

I suggested it because my original plan for the configuration file was 
based on this syntax with a strong inspiration from the OpenFirmware 
device tree. The idea was that the object name ("drive" here) had no 
hardcoded meaning, except for some predefined object names in order to 
keep a kind of backward compatibility with the current QEMU options. In 
order to create a new drive for example, you just have to do:

mydrive.class=drive
mydrive.if=scsi
mydrive.file=abc.img

the "class" field is used to select the device model. Then all the other 
parameters are used to initialize the device model. That way it is 
possible to keep the compatibility with the existing options and add a 
provision to instanciate arbitrary new device models, such as:

mynetworkcard.class="ne2000pci"
mynetworkcard.bus=1 # pci bus selection
mynetworkcard.macaddr=00:01:02:03:04:05
mynetworkcard.vlan=1

I will strongly support configuration file formats having this property.

Regards,

Fabrice.