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Date: Wed, 14 May 2008 16:36:03 +0200
From: "andrzej zaborowski" <balrogg@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [Qemu-devel] Re: [PATCH] Add support for a configuration file
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To: qemu-devel@nongnu.org
Cc: kvm-devel@lists.sourceforge.net, Anthony Liguori <aliguori@us.ibm.com>

On 14/05/2008, Anthony Liguori <anthony@codemonkey.ws> wrote:
> Anthony Liguori wrote:
>
> > I think this is pretty useful as-is.  I think it also gives us a
> reasonable
> > way to move forward that will keep everyone pretty happy.
> >
> > Here's a short example:
> >
> > qemu-system-x86_64 -hda ~/images/linux.img -snapshot -vnc :2
> >
> > Would become `foo.qemu':
> >
> >  # Main disk image
> >  hda=/home/anthony/images/linux.img
> >
> >  # Redirect disk writes to a temporary image
> >  snapshot
> >
> >  # Make the graphical display available on port 5902
> >  vnc=:2
> >
> > With:
> >
> > qemu-system-x86_64 -config foo.qemu
> >
>
>  One thought I had, is that it would be very nice to break up the -drive
> file=foo.img,if=scsi syntax within the config file.  In general, I'm
> thinking something like:
>
>  [drive]
>  file=foo.img
>  if=scsi
>
>  or:
>
>  drive {
>   file=foo.img
>   if=scsi
>  }

I like this one and it would be nice to be able to replace the equal
sign with whitespace.

What I'd love, though, but expect others will consider bloat, is that
files are passed through cpp before interpreting.  This way the syntax
becomes not (much) less powerful than the current command line
invocation where you get variable expansion for free.  I would hate to
type in some things in as many times as there are instances of a given
hardware.  Consider some disk arrays or the once discussed -pins
switch for initial state of pins or jumpers (some machines have
hundreds of them).
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