Re: [Qemu-devel] [PATCH] net: Inform the user about deprecated -net options

[Thomas Huth]

On 15/12/15 19:08, Paolo Bonzini wrote:
> 
> 
> On 15/12/2015 18:50, Thomas Huth wrote:
>> On 15/12/15 18:31, Paolo Bonzini wrote:
>>>
>>> On 15/12/2015 18:15, Thomas Huth wrote:
>>>> On 15/12/15 17:21, Paolo Bonzini wrote:
>> [...]
>>>>> For example you could print all DEVICE_CATEGORY_NETWORK devices that
>>>>> support device_add.
>>>>
>>>> I think that would not work since spapr-vlan is not hot-pluggable.
>>>
>>> cannot_instantiate_with_device_add_yet which actually refers to -device,
>>> not really device_add, so it would work.
>>
>> I just tried:
>>
>> (qemu) device_add spapr-vlan
>> Bus 'spapr-vio' does not support hotplugging
>>
>> ... did I miss something?
> 
> When I said "support device_add" I really meant "does not have
> cannot_instantiate_with_device_add_yet", but spapr-vlan should pass that
> test.

Ah, ok, that makes more sense... anyway, "-device ?" also lists some
devices like "ne2k_isa", ""usb-bt-dongle" and "vmxnet3" ... I somewhat
doubt that we want to have these in the list of "-net nic" supported
devices, too.

... hmmm, by the way, why the heck do we have vmxnet3 on powerpc? Does
that make sense at all?

>>>>> The thing is, people are still running QEMU from the command line.
>>>>>
>>>>> "-net nic -net bridge,br=virbr0" is still much less of a mouthful than
>>>>> "-netdev bridge,br=virbr0,id=br -device rtl8139,netdev=br" if all I want
>>>>> is something I can ssh into.
>>>>>
>>>>> It's easy to deprecate things.  It's hard to convince users that it's
>>>>> worth, and you haven't convinced this user. :)

Just another idea before we drop this topic again completely: What if
we'd extend "-netdev" to be easier to use, too. For example, if you'd
just specify "-netdev bridge,br=virbr0", without using an id and without
specifying a "-device", you would get the netdev hooked up to the
board's default NIC automatically. That would be even less to type than
your example with "-net" since you would not need the "-net nic"
parameter in that case... Would it then be ok to deprecate the "-net"
option?

 Thomas