Re: [Qemu-devel] [PATCH 0/4] Machine config files

[Markus Armbruster]

Gerd Hoffmann <address@hidden> writes:

> On 06/12/09 15:37, Markus Armbruster wrote:
>> It can be compiled from source with dtc, which doesn't seem to be
>> included in the patch series.  The language accepted by dtc is pretty
>> low-level: it talks NUL-terminates strings, byte strings and arrays of
>> "cells" (32 bit integers).
>
> [ a bunch of examples snipped ]
>
>> Is that really what we want for a configuration file?
>
> I do see a point in using fdt as qemu-internal representation.

I was talking about configuration file usability.  Internal
representation is a different matter.

>                                                                 ppc
> needs it anyway.

Could be generated from whatever internal representation we use.

>                   It is also a nice way to store the guest
> configuration for save/load and migration, you can just send the blob
> over the wire. And we can hide the details such as cells behind some
> nifty helper functions.

I agree we need the tree flattened to send it to disk or over the wire.
Keeping it flattened all the time could make certain tree editing jobs
more cumbersome.  We'll see.

> Qemu users should not be required to be fdt experts though.  We need
> another, more user-friendly interface to configure virtual machines.

Yup.

[...]