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Date: Sat, 29 Jan 2011 13:16:16 +0000
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Subject: Re: [Qemu-devel] Re: KVM call agenda for Jan 25
From: Stefan Hajnoczi <stefanha@gmail.com>
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To: Dushyant Bansal <cs5070214@cse.iitd.ac.in>
Cc: qemu-devel@nongnu.org

On Sat, Jan 29, 2011 at 10:50 AM, Dushyant Bansal
<cs5070214@cse.iitd.ac.in> wrote:
> I am interested in working on this project as part of gsoc. I have prior
> experience working with qemu.

Great.  I have put up a more detailed description on the QEMU GSoC 2011 page:
http://wiki.qemu.org/Google_Summer_of_Code_2011#QCOW2_.3C-.3E_QED_image_converter

Please be aware that organizations have not yet been selected by
Google and that GSoC planning is still in the early stages.  I want to
make sure that your expectations and the amount of upfront effort you
invest at this early stage reflect that so you're not disappointed if
things don't come together.

> I am now planning to start reading their source code. What do you suggest?
> Are there any other specific things that I should read about?

btrfs has an ext3 conversion mode that could be inspiring:
https://btrfs.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/Conversion_from_Ext3

You could tackle open bugs to familiarize yourself with the codebase:
http://goo.gl/DMxOD

Or this: which is faster, qemu-img convert -f <format> -O <format>
<src-image> <dst-image> or cp <src-image> <dst-image>?  What about for
raw images, shouldn't that be the same speed as cp(1)?  Poke around
the source code, profile it, understand what it's doing, think about
ways to improve it.  No need to do everything, just doing part of this
will give you background on QEMU's block layer.

Contributing patches is a good way get up to speed and show your
skills.  If time doesn't permit that, just think about the problem and
how you intend to solve it, and feel free to bounce ideas off me.

Stefan