On 29.08.2015 19:36, Programmingkid wrote: > > On Aug 29, 2015, at 12:39 PM, Max Reitz wrote: > >> On 29.08.2015 17:57, Programmingkid wrote: >>> >>> On Aug 29, 2015, at 11:40 AM, Max Reitz wrote: >>> >>>> On 27.08.2015 03:05, G 3 wrote: >>>>> I want to share files between my host and guest computer. A feature I >>>>> want to add would be a new menu item in the Machine menu called "Mount >>>>> Image File...". When the user selects it, a file open dialog box >>>>> displays. The user can then select the image file with the file he wants >>>>> to use. After pushing the OK button, the image file would be mounted >>>>> like a USB flash drive. This menu item would only show up if there is >>>>> usb support in the guest machine. >>>>> >>>>> Would you be open to accepting such a feature? >>>> >>>> Generally I'd expect this to be functionality exposed by the management >>>> layer. For instance using virt-manager, this can be achived as follows: >>>> Switch to "Details", then click "Add Hardware", choose "Storage" and >>>> "USB" as the "Bus type". Choose the image, click "Finish", done. >>> >>> Isn't Libvirt only available on Linux? This mount image file feature would >>> only be on Mac OS X. >> >> I'm not sure whether that sounds like a good idea, because then people >> using bare qemu on Linux would complain that it isn't available with >> Gtk. So if this was to be implemented, it would have to implemented >> cross-platform (or at least in a way so it can be used cross-platform >> later on). > > If making QEMU more user-friendly is a crime, I plead guilty!
Yes, in some people's eyes it is a crime because they say qemu should rather be machine-friendly. User-friendliness is always expensive, difficult to maintain, and a neverending source of complaints. So while it is always a nice thing to have, it comes at a hefty price. > I'm not a Linux user. I am a proud Macintosh user. We Mac users > like our software easy to use. I know this goes against the Linux > way of life. That is why this patch would only work on Mac OS X. > This will keep QEMU on Linux hard to use... just the way you guys > like it. Erm, well, I think I won't reply to that other than *cough* virt-manager *cough*. >>> Mac OS X users don't have all the fancy GUI wrappers >>> for QEMU :( >> >> Good thing most GNU/Linux distributions are free. ;-) >> >> (sorry, could not resist) > > ....lolz > > But on the other hand, you get what you pay for. Working qemu/KVM with a nice management layer on top of it? >>> Mac OS X is a second-class citizen in the QEMU world... >> >> Might have to do something with most (?) of it being non-free and Apple >> not caring enough about KVM. > > Fact, Apple has made an hypervisor API available as of Mac OS 10.10, so who > knows. Maybe in the future someone will implement KVM support on Mac OS X. As far as I know, someone even managed to create a proof-of-concept implementation of KVM for Windows. Of course it's possible, but it isn't there yet, and I was just explaining a possible reason why there aren't (which I'm assuming from what you told me) any nice user-friendly and feature-rich qemu management tools for OS X. > Fact, Apple now gives away Mac OS X for free. Yes I know, it is only for > Apple-only > hardware still. Then you know it's not free. Also, here I meant "free" as in "freedom", not "free" as in "beer". I don't know how much of OS X is free software. I know the kernel is, but most of the things above it aren't, as far as I remember. So that's why I don't know whether it would actually be reasonably possible for anyone outside Apple to develop a supported KVM host module. >> (And without KVM, people in turn don't care enough about OS X as a qemu >> host.) >> >> ((But all of that is pretty biased speculation, of course.)) > > Of course... Yep, since this is a well-tested flamewar topic, of course it is. My point wasn't to make OS X look bad. My point was to explain why OS X is a second-class citizen in the qemu world, and I feel like there is a very good reason for it, and that simply is missing KVM support. Another reason is probably that most of the active qemu developers are paid to focus on Linux-related things. >>>> The main problem I see with adding this functionality to qemu itself >>>> would be having to get even further into the GUI business, which hasn't >>>> worked out too well so far… >>> >>> That is because of several reasons. One being maintainers not wanting to >>> advance the GUI because they feel another program should be QEMU's >>> GUI. I'm sure there are plenty of good ideas that would advance QEMU's >>> GUI. These ideas just need to be accepted into QEMU rather than put off. >> >> Another is that some people simply feel that qemu should focus on being >> a backend than having to mess with frontend work, too. See the recent >> discussion on the Gtk code setting the locale and thus breaking QMP for >> an example why they have a point. > > We can have both. Command-line options are there that can turn on or off the > GUI. > Example: --disable-gtk. > > Ideally I want QEMU's GUI to be similar to VirtualBox's GUI. Doing stuff like > freezing and restoring a session would be awesome and a real time saver. Might be trivially possible with the things I described, since there is HMP's savevm/loadvm. On the other hand, I don't think you'll find (m)any friends for making qemu's GUI as feature-rich as VBox's. There have long been "non-invasive" GUIs for managing qemu VMs (such as qtemu), so this isn't some recent development. Maybe I can get you interested in writing a management application for OS X? I do not think that would be more difficult than plugging these features directly into qemu, and I think everyone would like that idea. As an OS X user, there shouldn't be any visible difference; and all non-OS-X users would not have any reason to complain. Because, as much as you may think this is worthless to hear, what you are describing is exactly what virt-manager offers. >> I guess you'll better talk to Markus about this. :-) >> >> Quote: "We should've stayed out of the GUI business." >> >> (http://lists.nongnu.org/archive/html/qemu-devel/2015-08/msg03049.html) > > That is totally fine for the Linux users. If they want to use the > command-line only, > let them. They are only hurting themselves :) Again, that is not necessarily true. For VMs where I want to get stuff done, I use libvirt and virt-manager. Max >>>> If we didn't care about that, than we'd have to think about the >>>> implementation. Internally, we'd probably call QMP's blockdev-add to >>>> open the image file, and then QMP's device_add to add the USB device. So >>>> then qemu would use its own management interfaces to execute the >>>> operation, which seems a bit strange to me, further hinting at the fact >>>> that we probably should leave this to the management layer. >>> >>> What works does, and it isn't always as nice looking >>> as we want it. I am sure we will use some kind of API to implement this >>> feature. >> >> Having to deal with ugly legacy cruft from time to time, I don't know >> whether "What works, works" is always appropriate. > > Public API's are what I will try to use. > >> >>> I just wish there were an easy way to share files between the host and the >>> guest. >> >> I don't think using emulated USB storage is the right way to do this, >> though. Stefan is working on file sharing using NFS over virtio-vsock, >> which seems more appropriate. But then again I don't whether >> virtio-vsock will work with an OS X host… > > Probably wouldn't work, but who knows. If the emulated network card did work > on > Mac OS X, then maybe ftp sharing would be possible. Then again QEMU does > have that USB network card. That might work. > >> >> === >> >> OK, if you really want to implement it, I'm certainly not the right one >> to stop you, so here is how I'd do it: >> >> My "BlockBackend and media" series rewrites the "change" HMP/QMP command >> to be a macro, basically, that actually executes four lower-level QMP >> commands. So this means we have a precedent of "macro" QMP commands, and >> this could be extended. So you could add a "macro" QMP command >> "usb-storage-insert-file" or something which executes blockdev-add + >> device_add (if that works).* >> >> Then, if I felt really fancy, I'd add some layer which allows >> generically executing QMP commands through the GUI, based on a whitelist >> of commands. Each parameter would have to be requested through some GUI >> interface, for instance, filenames would be queried through an >> appropriate dialog. Ideally, this would be GUI-agnostic, but this may >> not be reasonably possible. >> >> Then you'd whitelist usb-storage-insert-file (or however it is named), >> give it some nice alias and you'd be done. >> >> While this would be much work I feel like this would actually be the >> nicest solution. >> >> This is just a very rough outline, though, and since it somehow goes >> against everything qemu's GUI was used for so far (just the most basic >> things, basically nothing about controlling the VM except for >> Pause/Shutdown/Reboot) I have no idea how it would be received. >> >> Max >> >> >> *Actually you'd probably want a generic insert-storage-file which takes >> the kind of storage device to add as a parameter. >> > > I will have to examine this information more, but thank you very much for > helping. > Who knows, maybe someone might port this feature to GTK. >
signature.asc
Description: OpenPGP digital signature
