Re: [Qemu-devel] [PATCH 3/3 v2] Add a pc-0-10 machine type for compatibility with 0.10.x

[Mark McLoughlin]

On Thu, 2009-07-09 at 09:56 +0200, Gerd Hoffmann wrote:
> We could have each machine type register a list of default options. 
> Using qdev properties that should be doable in a fairly generic way, 
> like this:
> 
> virtio-blk-pci and virtio-console-pci get a "class" property. 
> virtio-net-pci gets a "msi" property.  ide-disk+cdrom gets a 
> "fw-version" property (well, not yet, when being converted to qdev).
> 
> pc-0.10 could then register a list of default properties, i.e.
> something 
> like
> 
>    "virtio-blk-pci"     => "class=0x??"
>    "virtio-console-pci" => "class=0x??"
>    "virtio-net-pci      => "msi=0"
>    "ide-disk"           => "fw-version=0.10.0"
> 
> When creating devices qdev would apply them.
> 
> I can prototype that.
> 
> comments?

I think this would be a very nice way of making what I did more generic,
but with the same external interface.

Time is running short for 0.11, though, so I'd suggest it could be an
incremental cleanup on top of the patches I posted.

If we're settled on adding '-M pc-0-10', I next want to:

  1) add '-M pc-0-11' and make it the default

  2) make '-M pc' a symlink to the latest machine type

i.e. 'qemu-system-x86_64 -M ?' would give:

  Supported machines are:
  pc         Standard PC with latest features
  pc-0-11    Standard PC compatible with qemu 0.11.x (default)
  pc-0-10    Standard PC compatible with qemu 0.10.x
  isapc      ISA-only PC

and libvirt, when creating a guest for the first time would parse this
output for the default value and store it in the XML config:

  <os>
    <type arch='x86_64' machine='pc-0-11'>hvm</type>
  </os>

Cheers,
Mark.