On Wed, Jul 22, 2015 at 03:40:55PM +0200, Markus Armbruster wrote: > Copying Andreas just in case. > > Thomas Huth <th...@redhat.com> writes: > > > On 07/17/2015 09:25 AM, Peter Maydell wrote: > >> On 17 July 2015 at 07:53, Thomas Huth <th...@redhat.com> wrote: > >>> Ok, assuming that my "Network traffic dumping for -netdev devices" patch > >>> series is going to solve the dumping-for-netdev problem, how do we > >>> tackle the remaining problems that we have to solve before we can > >>> deprecate -net? Does anybody have a survey of the (onboard) NICs that > >>> can only be configured with -net but not with -device? Could they > >>> nowadays be changed to work with -device, too, or are there still major > >>> obstacles to solve first? > >> > >> The problem is that "-device" says "create a new device and > >> configure it like this". But onboard NICs are created by > >> the board, so we want let the user say how to configure > >> those devices, not create new ones... > > The more general problem is lack of a uniform way to configure onboard > devices. > > We have a bunch of ways to configure onboard devices: -net nic, -serial, > -parallel, -drive, ... These all deposit configuration requests in > well-known places for the board code to pick up. A request can apply > > (a) to a mandatory onboard device, modifying its configuration, or > > (b) to an optional onboard device, triggering its creation, or > > (c) to nothing in particular. > > It all depends on the board code. > > For qdevified devices, you can replace (b) with -device, but not (a), as > Peter points out. > > To likewise replace (a), we'd need means to change an *existing* > device's properties. Complication: how to address the device. Onboard > devices don't have a qdev ID... QOM path? > > Aside: you can sometimes use -global to replace (a), but it's not > general, because -global applies to all devices of a certain type, not > just the one you're actually targeting. > > > Ok, I see ... maybe it makes sense to simply keep "-net nic" to be able > > to configure the default/onboard NIC, and only to remove all the other > > -net options instead ("-net user" etc.). The disliked vlan/hub concept > > could then be removed, too, since "-net nic" can be used together with > > "-netdev" nowadays by using something like "-net nic,netdev=xxx" as far > > as I know. That would clean up most points of confusion, I think, and > > would not cause too much code churn for the onboard NICs. Does that > > sound feasible? > > Deprecating -net except for -net nic sounds like a fine step forward to > me.
-net dump is also useful, we'll need some solution for that if we want to deprecate vlans. -- MST