[libvirt] Transitioning from HMP to QMP for QEMU

[Jan Kiszka]

On 2011-12-15 14:33, Kevin Wolf wrote:
> Am 15.12.2011 14:18, schrieb Jan Kiszka:
>> On 2011-12-15 14:02, Stefan Hajnoczi wrote:
>>> What is the status of QEMU's transition from HMP to the QMP interface?
>>>
>>> My current understanding is that QEMU provides new HMP commands for
>>> humans, but HMP is being phased out as an API.  Management tools
>>> should rely only on QMP for new commands.  That would mean new HMP
>>> commands are not guaranteed to produce backwards-compatible output
>>> because tools are not supposed to parse the output.
>>>
>>> On the libvirt side, new QEMU features should only be supported via
>>> the json monitor in the future (i.e. human monitor patches should not
>>> be sent/merged)?  Existing HMP commands will still need the human
>>> monitor support in order to handle old QEMU versions gracefully, but
>>> I'm thinking about new commands only.
>>>
>>> Does everyone agree on this?  I think this is an important discussion
>>> if we want our management interface to get better and more consistent
>>> in the future.
>>
>> To phase out the classic HMP implementation, we need an internal
>> HMP-over-JSON wrapper (with tab expansion etc.) so that virtual console
>> and gdbstub monitors continue to benefit from new commands. Those
>> interfaces will stay for a long time, I'm sure.
> 
> I think we're not talking about dropping HMP here, only about how long
> to support it as a stable API for management tools. I believe that we
> have been in a transitional phase for long enough now that we can start
> changing the output format of HMP commands without considering it an API
> breakage.

We are also talking about introducing new commands twice, which is a
PITA. Also, peoples interest in HMP vs. QMP varies. Some focus on
management usability, others on human-machine interaction. So you get
suggestions for new command typical either for one, not for both.

Jan

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