Re: [Qemu-devel] [PATCH] make /usr/bin/qemu the native arch

2007-08-01 Thread Robert Millan
 Management tools for QEMU will have come to rely on existing semantics
 of /usr/bin/qemu being i386.

How about just deprecating it?  For example, we could make
/usr/bin/qemu  be a script with:

#!/bin/bash
echo warning: $0 is deprecated, use qemu-system-i386 instead
exec qemu-system-i386 $@

 Changing this for merely cosmetic reasons [...]

It's not just cosmetic.  I recall you sent me some benchmarks (too bad
they didn't make it to the list, and I somehow lost that mail), but
they were done on i386 (which remains unaffected).  On x86_64, results
are different (specially if you have setup kqemu which only works with
qemu-system-x86_64).

-- 
Robert Millan

My spam trap is [EMAIL PROTECTED]  Note: this address is only intended
for spam harvesters.  Writing to it will get you added to my black list.




Re: [Qemu-devel] [PATCH] make /usr/bin/qemu the native arch

2007-07-11 Thread andrzej zaborowski

On 08/07/07, Daniel P. Berrange [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

On Sun, Jul 08, 2007 at 06:04:51PM +0100, Ricardo Almeida wrote:
 On 7/8/07, Daniel P. Berrange [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 On Sun, Jul 08, 2007 at 02:21:02PM +0200, Robert Millan wrote:
  Shouldn't /usr/bin/qemu be an alias for qemu-system-$(ARCH), where
 $(ARCH) is
  the native architecture?  Defaulting to i386 doesn't make much sense
 nowadays,
  specially since x86_64 is gradually obsoleting it.
 
 Management tools for QEMU will have come to rely on existing semantics of
 /usr/bin/qemu being i386.

 Why?! If they rely on 386 I think they should directly use
 qemu-system-i386... If they manage in an architecture independent way
 then use the qemu link...

Rely on a binary which doesn't currently exist ? A fresh checkout  build
of qemu cvs  does not produce any qemu-system-i386 binary. So that's not


Maybe it's a good idea to make qemu-system-i386 a symlink to qemu or
the other way, for now, and after some time do what Ricardo proposed,
which is more logical. After all qemu has already broken commandline
backwards compatibility many times and probably will do more times.

And here's one of my usual strange but fun ideas: make qemu a
wrapper that reads a number of first bytes of the
harddisk/cdrom/kernel image or whatever media was given, and applies a
heuristic to decide what architecture the instructions would be best
interpreted as. The file program likely already contains a sample of
such heuristic.

(A similar idea with reusing file code was for vvfat to detect what
OS is on a given partition and fake an MBR respective to the OS).

Cheers,
Andrzej




Re: [Qemu-devel] [PATCH] make /usr/bin/qemu the native arch

2007-07-08 Thread Daniel P. Berrange
On Sun, Jul 08, 2007 at 02:21:02PM +0200, Robert Millan wrote:
 
 Hi,
 
 Shouldn't /usr/bin/qemu be an alias for qemu-system-$(ARCH), where $(ARCH) is
 the native architecture?  Defaulting to i386 doesn't make much sense nowadays,
 specially since x86_64 is gradually obsoleting it.

Management tools for QEMU will have come to rely on existing semantics of
/usr/bin/qemu being i386. Changing this for merely cosmetic reasons would 
cause significant technical complications because tools would then have to
try and detect whether /usr/bin/qemu were native or i386. Thus I see no 
real functional/technical benefit to changing it, and plenty of downside.

Dan.
-- 
|=- Red Hat, Engineering, Emerging Technologies, Boston.  +1 978 392 2496 -=|
|=-   Perl modules: http://search.cpan.org/~danberr/  -=|
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Re: [Qemu-devel] [PATCH] make /usr/bin/qemu the native arch

2007-07-08 Thread Ricardo Almeida

On 7/8/07, Daniel P. Berrange [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

On Sun, Jul 08, 2007 at 02:21:02PM +0200, Robert Millan wrote:
 Shouldn't /usr/bin/qemu be an alias for qemu-system-$(ARCH), where $(ARCH) is
 the native architecture?  Defaulting to i386 doesn't make much sense nowadays,
 specially since x86_64 is gradually obsoleting it.

Management tools for QEMU will have come to rely on existing semantics of
/usr/bin/qemu being i386.


Why?! If they rely on 386 I think they should directly use
qemu-system-i386... If they manage in an architecture independent way
then use the qemu link...


Changing this for merely cosmetic reasons would


Not cosmetic, logic...


cause significant technical complications because tools would then have to
try and detect whether /usr/bin/qemu were native or i386.


See my previous why?! ;)


Thus I see no
real functional/technical benefit to changing it, and plenty of downside.


If it's more logic, you have a functional benefit. And for the
downside, I don't see them except for non-logic assumptions ;)

Regards,
Ricardo Almeida




Re: [Qemu-devel] [PATCH] make /usr/bin/qemu the native arch

2007-07-08 Thread Daniel P. Berrange
On Sun, Jul 08, 2007 at 06:04:51PM +0100, Ricardo Almeida wrote:
 On 7/8/07, Daniel P. Berrange [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 On Sun, Jul 08, 2007 at 02:21:02PM +0200, Robert Millan wrote:
  Shouldn't /usr/bin/qemu be an alias for qemu-system-$(ARCH), where 
 $(ARCH) is
  the native architecture?  Defaulting to i386 doesn't make much sense 
 nowadays,
  specially since x86_64 is gradually obsoleting it.
 
 Management tools for QEMU will have come to rely on existing semantics of
 /usr/bin/qemu being i386.
 
 Why?! If they rely on 386 I think they should directly use
 qemu-system-i386... If they manage in an architecture independent way
 then use the qemu link...

Rely on a binary which doesn't currently exist ? A fresh checkout  build 
of qemu cvs  does not produce any qemu-system-i386 binary. So that's not 
really a viable answer to my point, which is that by renaming the binary
there will be added complexity in any tools using qemu, for zero functional
improvement.

 Changing this for merely cosmetic reasons would
 
 Not cosmetic, logic...

There was logic with existing naming scheme too, merely different logic
than what is proposed. A rename is merely changing logic for cosmetic
reasons.

 cause significant technical complications because tools would then have to
 try and detect whether /usr/bin/qemu were native or i386.
 
 See my previous why?! ;)

Because there is no qemu-system-i386 binary

 Thus I see no
 real functional/technical benefit to changing it, and plenty of downside.
 
 If it's more logic, you have a functional benefit. And for the
 downside, I don't see them except for non-logic assumptions ;)

If there was no historical precedent with all previous QEMU releases naming
it qemu then it'd not be an issue. Since there is historical precedent, 
changing it will create unneccessary complexity for any tool which wishes to
manage QEMU instances. Changing the logic behind binary name alone is *not* 
a functional benefit, it is merely cosmetic.

Dan.
-- 
|=- Red Hat, Engineering, Emerging Technologies, Boston.  +1 978 392 2496 -=|
|=-   Perl modules: http://search.cpan.org/~danberr/  -=|
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