From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([140.186.70.92]:50555) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1QZlJU-0005YW-Kj for qemu-devel@nongnu.org; Thu, 23 Jun 2011 10:55:26 -0400 Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1QZlJS-0001Gb-Va for qemu-devel@nongnu.org; Thu, 23 Jun 2011 10:55:24 -0400 Received: from e34.co.us.ibm.com ([32.97.110.152]:60583) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1QZlJS-0001GD-Or for qemu-devel@nongnu.org; Thu, 23 Jun 2011 10:55:22 -0400 Received: from d03relay01.boulder.ibm.com (d03relay01.boulder.ibm.com [9.17.195.226]) by e34.co.us.ibm.com (8.14.4/8.13.1) with ESMTP id p5NEgDtq010180 for ; Thu, 23 Jun 2011 08:42:13 -0600 Received: from d03av03.boulder.ibm.com (d03av03.boulder.ibm.com [9.17.195.169]) by d03relay01.boulder.ibm.com (8.13.8/8.13.8/NCO v10.0) with ESMTP id p5NEt6Sx208654 for ; Thu, 23 Jun 2011 08:55:06 -0600 Received: from d03av03.boulder.ibm.com (loopback [127.0.0.1]) by d03av03.boulder.ibm.com (8.14.4/8.13.1/NCO v10.0 AVout) with ESMTP id p5N8t4EY019771 for ; Thu, 23 Jun 2011 02:55:05 -0600 Message-ID: <4E0353C3.60600@linux.vnet.ibm.com> Date: Thu, 23 Jun 2011 09:54:59 -0500 From: Michael Roth MIME-Version: 1.0 References: <4E023A9D.9010205@linux.vnet.ibm.com> <20110623092954.GA2682@bow.redhat.com> <4E032AC5.2080709@redhat.com> In-Reply-To: <4E032AC5.2080709@redhat.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Subject: Re: [Qemu-devel] RFC: Qemu Guest Tools ISO List-Id: List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , To: Avi Kivity Cc: agl@linux.vnet.ibm.com, Stefan Hajnoczi , "qemu-devel@nongnu.org Developers" , Anthony Liguori , pmyers@redhat.com, bsarathy@redhat.com On 06/23/2011 07:00 AM, Avi Kivity wrote: > On 06/23/2011 02:08 PM, Stefan Hajnoczi wrote: >> On Thu, Jun 23, 2011 at 10:29 AM, Alon Levy wrote: >> > On Wed, Jun 22, 2011 at 01:55:25PM -0500, Michael Roth wrote: >> >> Goal: >> >> >> >> Provide a mechanism, similar to vmware and virtualbox guest tools >> >> ISOs, that allows us to easily distribute guest tools (and >> >> potentially drivers) for linux and windows guests. >> > >> > What would be the advantage for linux guests, with their package >> managers already >> > handling this task? I see how it would make testing easier with >> various linux >> > distributions, but for management I wonder if it won't be easier to >> use the >> > package management system to update the guests same as the hosts. >> >> If the guest tools come from the host QEMU we don't need complicated >> compatibility testing and fallbacks. Guest and host will be in sync >> and support the same features. >> > > Even building the tools would be very hard. In general if you build > against libc version y, you cannot expect your code to work against libc > version y-1, unless you take special measures. With other libraries the > "special measures" may not even be possible. Nvidia/ATI driver installers might be a good (or bad) precedent, I believe they ship a generic blob....need to confirm. We'd want to have a controlled environment that's used for building the tools we add to the ISO though. > > (I'm assuming statically linking the binaries is out of the question) > Not totally, but the build environment would need to be carefully crafted, and for something like the guest agent which pulls in glib/curl I'm not sure how viable that is.