From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([2001:4830:134:3::10]:50781) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1fQZZW-000574-Fu for qemu-devel@nongnu.org; Wed, 06 Jun 2018 10:37:59 -0400 Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1fQZZV-0004bR-AU for qemu-devel@nongnu.org; Wed, 06 Jun 2018 10:37:58 -0400 Date: Wed, 6 Jun 2018 15:37:37 +0100 From: Daniel =?utf-8?B?UC4gQmVycmFuZ8Op?= Message-ID: <20180606143737.GI3064@redhat.com> Reply-To: Daniel =?utf-8?B?UC4gQmVycmFuZ8Op?= References: <20180528212510.GC4660@redhat.com> <20180529064415.GA4756@localhost.localdomain> <2b3eef00-f326-c1e6-0e4b-b7602646eec4@redhat.com> <20180605092159.GA2544@work-vm> <46ef4200-eccf-7e65-d3a0-69e4a7414b51@redhat.com> <20180606111406.GD2660@work-vm> <9e8b49fb-0162-bf35-21bb-acc0dc28555f@redhat.com> <20180606120050.GB2661@work-vm> <61a301dd-8e50-8799-8328-341d6ab744f5@redhat.com> <20180606143134.GG2660@work-vm> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <20180606143134.GG2660@work-vm> Subject: Re: [Qemu-devel] storing machine data in qcow images? List-Id: List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , To: "Dr. David Alan Gilbert" Cc: Max Reitz , Kevin Wolf , qemu-block@nongnu.org, "Michael S. Tsirkin" , armbru@redhat.com, qemu-devel@nongnu.org, "Richard W.M. Jones" , stefanha@redhat.com On Wed, Jun 06, 2018 at 03:31:35PM +0100, Dr. David Alan Gilbert wrote: > > Not in this case because it'd still be a flat qcow2 file in a simple tar > > archive. > > > > But you're right if we had a more complex format (like chunks stored in > > a tar file). > > My only problem with using the tar like that is that all tools > everywhere would need to be updated to be able to parse them. I feel it is the opposite actually. By adding named blobs or custom strings to qcow2, we've effectively invented a new type of archive format, except apps cant use the normal unzip/tar tools/apis they already have. Instead they need to use qemu-img to read,add,remove blobs from qcow2. It is very compelling to use an existing archive format like tar/zip because every language has APIs for dealing with them and apps probably already do this for things like OVA. Regards, Daniel -- |: https://berrange.com -o- https://www.flickr.com/photos/dberrange :| |: https://libvirt.org -o- https://fstop138.berrange.com :| |: https://entangle-photo.org -o- https://www.instagram.com/dberrange :|