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Date: Sun, 24 Jan 2010 09:25:56 -0600
From: Anthony Liguori <anthony@codemonkey.ws>
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Subject: Re: [Qemu-devel] [PATCH 0/4] Introduce global config (v3)
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To: Avi Kivity <avi@redhat.com>
Cc: John Cooper <john.cooper@redhat.com>, Paolo Bonzini <pbonzini@redhat.com>, Anthony Liguori <aliguori@us.ibm.com>, qemu-devel@nongnu.org, Gerd Hoffman <kraxel@redhat.com>

On 01/24/2010 09:04 AM, Avi Kivity wrote:
> On 01/24/2010 04:22 PM, Anthony Liguori wrote:
>> This series introduces global config files stored in /etc/qemu.  
>> There is both
>> a common config (qemu.conf) and a per-target config 
>> (target-<TARGET_NAME>.conf).
>>
>> I've removed the default device bits from the series as it requires 
>> some more
>> thought on how to best integrate it.  That makes this series rather 
>> simple.
>
> btw, what does the corresponding patch to our imaginary management 
> tool author guide read?  Do we recommend -nodefconfig or not?  I think 
> we should, since otherwise qemu behaviour can be completely unexpected 
> by the management tool.

It depends.  I think there are two classes of management tools.  The 
first class, like libvirt, completely hides the details of QEMU from the 
user.  For libvirt, it should definitely use -nodefconfig because a user 
should not be encouraged to tweak bits without libvirt knowing about it.

A second class of management tools would work with QEMU and basically 
extend what we currently expose.  IOW, guest's would be represented 
through our native config file, full access would be provided to 
monitor/QMP commands.  For this class of tools, a user should be 
encouraged to use the default configuration files to make global changes 
to a particular node.

Regards,

Anthony Liguori