[virt-tools-list] RFC: virt-manager UI philosophy draft

[Cole Robinson]

On 6/19/19 7:55 PM, Peter Crowther wrote:
> Thanks, Cole - very useful!
> 
> I'd like to challenge one aspect, which is your single axis of basic /
> intermediate / advanced virt *user* in the definitions at the end.  I
> wonder whether you're confounding two axes: user, and also environment. 
> Many of the exclusions you're choosing to put into the advanced user
> section are definitions of the environment: many hosts, many VMs,
> special host or guest configuration.  You make that explicit at the top
> of the document, but not at the end.  We're by no means "advanced users"
> in most senses; we want the simplest thing that could possibly work
> (which is why we're not touching OpenStack with a bargepole - too many
> moving parts).  Is it worth moving some of the environment stuff into an
> explicit "advanced virt environment" section to match the top section? 
> Makes it easier for folks like me to reason about the philosophy!

Yes that's fair, thanks for pointing it out. I took a stab at changing
it, keeping it as one section but explicitly mentioning advanced users
or usecases:

Advanced virt user or usecase

An advanced virt user likely has some experience with libvirt XML or
qemu command line. They may know that they need some advanced XML knob
for their VMs, or some special host config or performance options. They
may be running virt in an advanced environment that depends on
non-standard host configuration.

We want virt-manager to still be useful to these users for fulfilling
basic and intermediate needs, but not get in the way or prevent usage of
their advanced config, within reason.

Some examples:

    usecase: managing many hosts and many VMs
    usecase: require tweaking anything but the most standard performance
options
    usecase: generally anything that requires special host or guest
configuration outside virt-manager
    user: Generally anybody that knows the qemu command line or XML
config options they want




Thanks,
Cole