[Libguestfs] Appliance image. Why raw?

[Pavel Butsykin]

On 20.06.2017 17:47, Richard W.M. Jones wrote:
> On Tue, Jun 20, 2017 at 05:04:53PM +0300, Pavel Butsykin wrote:
>> I noticed that raw is intentionally used as image format for appliance
>> image. So I would like to ask, is there any reason to use raw as image
>> format for appliance?
> 
> The simple answer is because we create the appliance image (it's an
> ext2/3/4 filesystem) using e2fsprogs, and that library wouldn't know
> how to create anything else since it always assumes it's writing
> directly to a device.
> 
> https://github.com/libguestfs/supermin/blob/master/src/format_ext2.mli#L22-L29
> 
> HTH,

Yes, the main point is clear, thanks.

I asked because we supply the prepared appliance, so would like to use
qcow2. Given that the applaince image is completely controlled, for
supermin and fixed appliance, in both the cases. We could use
autodetect, it is already implemented in qemu, so to add it to
libguestfs will simply. I'm going to prepare the patches, what do you
think?

> Rich.