[libvirt] mdevctl: A shoestring mediated device management and persistence utility

[Alex Williamson]

On Mon, 1 Jul 2019 10:20:43 +0200
Cornelia Huck <cohuck at redhat.com> wrote:

> On Fri, 28 Jun 2019 11:05:46 -0600
> Alex Williamson <alex.williamson at redhat.com> wrote:
> 
> > On Fri, 28 Jun 2019 11:06:48 +0200
> > Cornelia Huck <cohuck at redhat.com> wrote:  
> 
> > > What do you think of a way to specify JSON for the attributes directly
> > > on the command line? Or would it be better to just edit the config
> > > files directly?    
> > 
> > Supplying json on the command like seems difficult, even doing so with
> > with jq requires escaping quotes.  It's not a very friendly
> > experience.  Maybe something more like how virsh allows snippets of xml
> > to be included, we could use jq to validate a json snippet provided
> > as a file and add it to the attributes... of course if we need to allow
> > libvirt to modify the json config files directly, the user could do
> > that as well.  Is there a use case you're thinking of?  Maybe we could
> > augment the 'list' command to take a --uuid and --dumpjson option and
> > the 'define' command to accept a --jsonfile.  Maybe the 'start' command
> > could accept the same, so a transient device could define attributes
> > w/o excessive command line options.  Thanks,
> > 
> > Alex  
> 
> I was mostly thinking about complex configurations where writing a JSON
> config would be simpler than adding a lot of command line options.
> Something like dumping a JSON file and allowing to refer to a JSON file
> as you suggested could be useful; but then, those very complex use
> cases are probably already covered by editing the config file directly.
> Not sure if it is worth the effort; maybe just leave it as it is for
> now.

Well, I already did it.  It seems useful for creating transient devices
with attribute specifications.  If it's too ugly we can drop it.
Thanks,

Alex