Re: [Qemu-devel] Re: [kvm-devel] [PATCH] Add support for a configuration file

[Andreas Färber]

Am 14.05.2008 um 16:41 schrieb Avi Kivity:

> Daniel P. Berrange wrote:
> > That's very nearly YAML format[1], which is attractive because  
> > parsers
> > are available in every major programming language, and it is still
> > pretty human friendly.
> >
> > So my preference would be to go with the last option and make sure
> > it really is YAML compliant so people can use standard tools for  
> > generating and parsing the format.
>
> Using a standard format has the added benefit that things like  
> quoting are taken care of.
>
> Filenames with leading and trailing spaces, anyone?  Embedded  
> control characters?

XML parsers are certainly much more widespread than YAML parsers,  
especially if this format it intended for use by frontends. XML allows  
to define entities as a way to avoid copy-and-paste, and frontends  
could easily extend the file with their own configuration data.

Proposing your own QEMU config file format might make sense for  
defining pins and complex peripheral setups but not for the usual  
options such as disks and RAM. On the other hand, passing a config  
file to the qemu app already requires the user to know which one to  
invoke it with, so its not suited for 'dumb' users anyway. ;)

Andreas