Re: Redesign of QEMU startup & initial configuration

[Daniel P . Berrangé]

On Fri, Dec 10, 2021 at 04:26:20PM +0100, Markus Armbruster wrote:
> 
> The existing binary provides bad CLI and limited QMP.
> 
> Going from limited to good QMP involves reworking the startup code.  I
> believe that's easier in a new binary.
> 
> Going from bad CLI to good CLI involves incompatible change.
> Impractical as long as the CLI is a stable interface.  I believe the
> sane way out is a new binary.
> 
> However, I can't see why we'd want to put a good CLI in the old binary
> then.  We could just as well put it in the new binary, or in a wrapper
> program around the new binary.

Having good CLI in a completely new binary is likely to be easier
for users to understand too. The typical pitfall with our existing
binaries is that they provide 4 ways to do the same thing, from
the different points in QEMU's life. This constantly trips up
unsuspecting users and also makes our docs task way more complicated
to think about.

If we're going to have a good CLI, it would ideally only have
one way to do each given task.

No matter what we do we're fighting against a mass of docs
all over the internet talking about 15 years of old QEMU
syntax. If we do a good CLI in a newly named binary, at
least when reading docs, it'll be pretty clear whether
it is talking about the old QEMU or new QEMU binaries,
reducing liklihood of mixing things up.



Regards,
Daniel
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