[Qemu-devel] Fate of the read-only block drivers?

[Christoph Hellwig]

Currently we have four very simple, read-only block drivers in the
tree:

 - cloop:
        This one is known buggy for non-trivial use and didn't get
        any chance but the usual API changes and cleanup sweeps
        since it was commited in 2004.

 - dmg:
        This one is really grotty and by auditing the code and comparing
        it to dmg2img completely buggy for non-compressed chunks.  It's
        also missing lots of the features in modern dmg image.  Also
        there's no creation tool for Linux.  No non-trivial commits
        since the initial import in 2004.

 - bochs:
        There is an bximage tools to actually create images for it,
        but not to actually add any content to them.  It had one
        non-trivial commit in 2007 to add support for growable formats
        since it's initial commit in 2004.

 - parallels:
        I can't find any way to actually create the image except with
        the parallels image tool which seems to require a commercial
        parallels license.
        No non-trivial commits since the initial import in 2007.

At this point I'm not sure if it's worth bothering to fix these up,
as they're bitrotted and except for cloop there's no reasy way to
actually create test images for them.

Any good reason to keep them, and if yes any good idea for a test plan
to keep them working?