Re: [Qemu-devel] [PATCH v1 7/8] net: Add a new convenience option "-n" to configure default/on-board NICs

[Thomas Huth]

On 19.02.2018 17:20, Paolo Bonzini wrote:
> On 19/02/2018 10:15, Thomas Huth wrote:
>> The legacy "-net" option can be quite confusing for the users since most
>> people do not expect to get a "vlan" hub between their emulated guest
>> hardware and the host backend. But so far, we are also not able to get
>> rid of "-net" completely, since it is the only way to configure on-board
>> NICs that can not be instantiated via "-device" yet. It's also a little
>> bit shorter to type "-net nic -net tap" instead of "-device xyz,netdev=n1
>> -netdev tap,id=n1".
>>
>> So what we need is a new convenience option that is shorter to type than
>> the full -device + -netdev stuff, and which can be used to configure the
>> on-board NICs that can not be handled via -device yet. Thus this patch now
>> provides such a new option "-n": It adds an entry in the nd_table to
>> configure a on-board / default NIC, creates a host backend and connects
>> the two directly, without a confusing "vlan" hub inbetween.
> 
> Sorry for the bikeshedding, but... perhaps "-n" is a bit bold.  While I
> initially couldn't come up with a better one, after putting some thought
> into it "-nic" came to mind.  There's precedent in naming the option for
> the *front-end* device that it creates, whereas the arguments define
> either the front-end (e.g. "model") or the back-end; see for example
> "-drive".  "-nic tap,model=e1000" and "-nic none" both make nice sense.

Actually, I like the idea with "--nic", that indeed makes sense here and
is still quite short to type. I'll use that in v2 (but I'll wait one or
two more days for some more review comments before sending that out).

 Thomas