Re: [Qemu-devel] [PATCH] chardev: add vte chardev

[Gerd Hoffmann <kraxel@redhat.com>]

  Hi,

>> Well, it already is.  Not that I want extend it or would recommend using
>> it if there are better options.  But there is no reason to break it, and
>> it is useful to me now and then.
> 
> qemu -display sdl -vnc :1 -serial vc
> 
> Continues to do what it did before.

Yes.

> qemu -display gtk -vnc :1 -serial vc
> 
> Seg faults which is bad.  I can look more deeply into that.

The "console: data structures overhaul" patch series posted earlier this
week fixes this.

> But with your proposal, the above would either (1) use the old style
> console in GTK or (2) not make the console available in gtk.

Yes.  If you want the text consoles on vnc you must use 'vc'.  We then
can decide to show or not show the 'vc' consoles with gtk too, at the
end this will be just two lines of code.

If you don't care about text consoles on vnc you can pic 'vte'.  Then
they will show up on gtk only.

And having separate chardevs for 'vc' and 'vte' empowers the user to
pick what he wants.

> Both are bad because they have consequences for:
> 
> qemu -serial vc
> 
> The above must continue to have a reasonable behavior by default and
> with GTK as the default, that means using VTE as the terminal emulation.

Why?   We can wind up vc text consoles for gtk, then the above will give
you a text console.  As compatible as possible, as it will be the
exactly same thing you got in qemu 1.4 with sdl as default ui.

If you want the new features, use the new options.  That always has been
the policy with qemu, I fail to see why gtk should be different here.

> If you can find a way to make 'qemu -display gtk -vnc :1 -serial vc'
> behave without impacting the other use-cases, I'm open to that but just
> renaming 'vc' to 'vte' for gtk is going to be a compat breaker.

IMO current gtk code breaks compat by hijacking 'vc'.

cheers,
  Gerd