[Qemu-devel] Re: The State of the SaveVM format

[Juan Quintela]

"Michael S. Tsirkin" <address@hidden> wrote:
> On Thu, Sep 10, 2009 at 02:55:07PM +0200, Juan Quintela wrote:
>> "Michael S. Tsirkin" <address@hidden> wrote:
>> > On Wed, Sep 09, 2009 at 09:02:07PM -0500, Anthony Liguori wrote:
>> >>>   If we complicate vmstate now to shoehorn pre-vmstate
>> >>> formats into vmstate, that ancient history will continue to haunt us.
>> >>> Complicating a program is far easier than the other direction.
>> >>>   
>> >>
>> >> Let's take it one step at a time.  There is an awful lot of areas where  
>> >> we can support older versions without adding complications.  Let's  
>> >> approach the complicated ones one at a time.
>> >
>> > I'm not sure I understand this talk about "pre-vmstate formats".
>> > I thought vmstate patches were, at least for the most part, trying
>> > to reimplement existing format with the table-driver design?
>> >
>> > If that's not so and we are changing the format now, is it too late to
>> > consider some standard serialization format rather than rolling our own?
>> 
>> We are using previous format.  At some point we should move to other
>> format.  When/what is still not decided.  Each time at its time.
>
> Ah, that's what I thought.
>
>> Once
>> we have everything using vmstate, we have a declarative description of
>> the state.  Going for tables with names + types to any format is just an
>> exercise of walking the tables and writing a pretty-printer and a parser.
>> 
>> Later, Juan.
>
> Good point. But if we do intend to switch formats because of vmstate and
> separately switch to a standard format, it might be easier on users if
> we do a single switch, in the same release cycle.

Switch will be done for 0.12, 0.11 should have been released already.
1st switch everything to vmstate, and then compare/study/decide formats.

Later, Juan.