[libvirt] [PATCH] virsh: add aliases 'boot', 'stop', and 'restart'

[Daniel P. Berrange]

On Thu, Nov 08, 2012 at 10:30:55AM -0500, James B. Byrne wrote:
> 
> On Thu, November 8, 2012 09:24, Daniel P. Berrange wrote:
> 
> >
> > NACK to this patch. I think the current command names are good.
> > Creating duplicates will make life worse. First, it creates
> > divergance from the similarly named commands for networks,
> > storage and other objects. It also means scripts written again
> > the new commands will not work with existing libvirt.
> 
> Duplicates (aliases) will make life worse for whom?  In what way?  On
> what evidence?  The present nomenclature is idiomatic to virsh and is
> a variance with how many people think of managing a host whether
> virtual or not.  On the other hand, one does not customarily speak of
> rebooting a network or a storage array, at least not in my experience.
> 
> >
> > I actually think that shutdown & reboot are *better* names
> > than restart and stop.
> 
> Then change start to boot and be done with it.  But, the issue really
> is what English words are commonly associated with each other in the
> context we are dealing with.  I submit that 'start' is not intuitively
> associated with 'shutdown' by the vast majority of English speakers
> and hardly associated with 'reboot' by any.
> 
> Consider the syntax of 'initctl' and 'service'.  Initctl uses start,
> stop and restart.  Service scripts virtually without exception use
> start, stop and restart, including that for libvirtd.  Operators are
> far more likely to be familiar with this combination of terms than any
> other.  Why force them to learn yet one more variant?  What is the
> advantage for the users?

If you are comparing to init services, then the 'stop' verb is semanticaly
equivalent to libvirt's 'destory' verb, not the shutdown verb. 'stop'
does a synchronous termination of the service.

Daniel
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