Re: [Qemu-devel] [PATCH 1/3] Modular command line options

[Ian Jackson]

Fabrice Bellard writes ("Re: [Qemu-devel] [PATCH 1/3] Modular command line 
options"):
> Jan Kiszka wrote:
> > [table-driven options]
> 
> I am not sure it is the way to follow because soon the configuration
> file will be the way to pass elaborated options to QEMU.

On the contrary, a table-driven command-line parsing arrangement can
be reused by the config file reader.  This makes it easy to ensure
that the command-line options and config file settings have the same
names and do the same things.

If, while inventing the new config file setup, we want to improve the
names and syntaxes of the settings, we can do that if we have a way to
make two differently formatted options control the same internal
setting variables.  But we will want one of those anyway because
sooner or later we will decide that some of the config file options we
have invented aren't the right way of expressing it, and will want to
change them without breaking old configurations.

Using the same data source for both also has the advantage that as new
syntaxes are provided in the config file, the same syntax (or some
easily-related syntax, depending on the exact form of the config file
and command line parser harnesses) automatically becomes available on
the command line.

But I agree with Glauber Costa's specific comments and I have some of
my own.

Ian.