Re: Redesign of QEMU startup & initial configuration

[Daniel P . Berrangé]

On Mon, Dec 13, 2021 at 06:37:44PM +0100, Paolo Bonzini wrote:
> On 12/13/21 16:28, Markus Armbruster wrote:
> > Would you object to me expanding the CLI here to the point where I think
> > we can deprecate the old binary?
> > 
> > If yes, why?
> 
> Yes, for two reasons.
> 
> First, because there will be usually differences between the command lines
> as mentioned elsewhere in the thread.  qemu-system-* is a good name, but one
> that is already taken by 15 years of docs using the existing command line.

T

Lets pick naming to make it clearer who/what each binary is targetted
towards. e.g.

  - /usr/bin/qemu-buildvm-$TARGET   for the low level binary that just
    speaks QMP on stdio / passed in pre-opened socket, targetted
    at mgmt apps and needs a series of commands to build a VM up
    from scratch

  - /usr/bin/qemu (or /usr/bin/qemu-vm) - for a high level binary that
    targets humans and uses a templating system to expose a friendly
    simple config, that internally invokes whichever target specific
    /usr/bin/qemu-buildvm-$TARGET is implied, plus any other vhost-user
    backends, or whatever other helper processes it needs

> Second, because a command line is really hard to get right as complexity
> increases.  QMP is the way to go to get as clean as possible a configuration
> mechanism.  There *will* be a second set of warts layered on top of the
> above code, and I don't want that.

Turning the high level / short config into a general purpose templating
problem, strictly separated from the low level binary using QMP, means
gives us a more flexible way to live with the warts IMHO.

Regards,
Daniel
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