Re: [Qemu-devel] [PATCH v3] ui/cocoa.m: Add Mount image file menu item

[Peter Maydell]

On 17 September 2015 at 21:17, Programmingkid <address@hidden> wrote:
> Add "Mount Image File..." and a "Eject Image File" menu items to
> cocoa interface. This patch makes sharing files between the
> host and the guest user-friendly.
>
> The "Mount Image File..." menu item displays a dialog box having the
> user pick an image file to use in QEMU. The image file is setup as
> a USB flash drive. The user can do the equivalent of removing the
> flash drive by selecting the file in the "Eject Image File" submenu.
>
> Signed-off-by: John Arbuckle <address@hidden>

I've thought a bit about this, and I really don't think this sort
of feature should be part of QEMU itself. Our general design for
how QEMU does this sort of thing is that an external program
(virt-manager, for instance) is responsible for providing most
of the UI conveniences the user wants, and QEMU's "ui" code is
a fairly simple minimum-functionality affair. I agree with Markus
that this separation of concerns has generally worked OK for us.

I don't think OSX should be an exception to this design model:
 (a) being an odd special case is never a good idea
 (b) as a practical matter, I'm the only person who really reviews
OSX patches, and I don't have either the time nor the UI or OSX
expertise to deal with maintaining what will effectively be a
vm-manager grafted onto the side of QEMU

So I think your efforts would be better spent in either porting
one of the Linux frontends like libvirt/virt-manager, or in
writing a custom OSX specific frontend.

thanks
-- PMM