Re: [Qemu-devel] Spice project is now open

[Anthony Liguori]

Mark McLoughlin wrote:
> On Fri, 2009-12-11 at 13:04 -0600, Anthony Liguori wrote:
>   
> > But to introduce another protocol where a user has to make a choice to 
> > use Spice over VNC, I think we need a really good justification for 
> > that.  It's really about complexity.  A user shouldn't have to know 
> > about Spice or VNC.  They shouldn't have to contemplate the trade-offs 
> > of whether their management tool is aware or not.  It should Just Work. 
> >     
>
> That's a good goal.
>
> If we add a new protocol, we could achieve the same thing by allowing
> qemu support both VNC and Spice at runtime. Then you just need a client
> like virt-viewer that can handle both protocols, and old VNC clients
> will continue to be able to connect to newer qemu.
>   

Supporting them at the same time could be potentially challenging.  You 
would need to render Spice locally in qemu in order to expose it via vnc.

Another nasty bit is that two protocols mean two different sets of 
authentication mechanisms.  Does Spice support SASL based 
authentication?  Could it make sense to essentially tunnel Spice through 
vnc in order to reuse the existing authentication infrastructure?

Regards,

Anthony Liguori