[Qemu-devel] Is there a reason -redir binds to INADDR_ANY?

[David Barrett]

I'm using qemu on a server with multiple ips/interfaces and I'd like to 
use -redir to bind a specific host ip:port to a specific guest ip:port. 
 However, -redir doesn't allow specifying a host ip, and instead just 
binds to INADDR_ANY on the host system.  (in slirp/socket.c/solisten())

Is there a particular reason for this limitation?  Is there any interest 
in a patch to allow specific host interface binding?

It seems a straightforward change, through the most obvious choice for a 
new -redir syntax might create backwards compatibility problems.  It's 
currently:

        -redir [tcp|udp]:host-port:[guest-host]:guest-port

And the most obvious change would be something like:

        -redir [tcp|udp]:[host-host]:host-port:[guest-host]:guest-port

Granted, the parser could choose the first syntax if only three colons 
are found, and the second if four are found... but that's not very pretty.

Incidentally, is there a rough timeline or estimate for the next formal 
release of qemu?  I'm not super eager to deviate from the mainline for 
long, nor adopt unstable code prematurely.

Thanks!

-david