On Sep 24, 2015, at 2:57 AM, Markus Armbruster wrote: > Programmingkid <programmingk...@gmail.com> writes: > >> On Sep 23, 2015, at 4:35 PM, Peter Maydell wrote: >> >>> On 17 September 2015 at 21:17, Programmingkid >>> <programmingk...@gmail.com> 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 <programmingk...@gmail.com> >>> >>> 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. >> >> I understand that time is precious. It is one of those things >> that we only have a finite amount of. Every user can agree >> to that. This patch was pretty hairy looking with the QDict >> and other unfamiliar code. With that said I'm not ready to >> give up on this patch. It is a huge time saver for the user. >> Without it, the user would need to spend a lot of time >> investigating documentation. What's worse is the user >> would have to type out full paths to files they need. This >> would definitely be error prone and frustrating. > > Nobody is challenging the idea that many users appreciate a GUI. > > What we've been trying to tell you is where in this software layer cake > the GUI should be. In Peter's words, "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".
That is easy for you to say. Linux already has virt-manager. Mac OS X doesn't. Expecting someone to just go and port another program to Mac OS X is unreasonable. The amount of time and energy it would take to do so would make it hard. > >> This patch can definitely be more simplified. QMP >> commands could be used in place of C functions. >> This would reduce the patch size greatly. > > You're quite welcome to use QMP the way it wants to be used: as an > external interface. > > Abusing it as internal interface won't fly. The QMP interface is primarily there to help a gui interact with QEMU. That is what I intend to use it for.
