Re: [Qemu-devel] feature idea: allow user to run custom scripts

[Markus Armbruster]

Peter Maydell <address@hidden> writes:

> On 30 September 2015 at 09:14, Dr. David Alan Gilbert
> <address@hidden> wrote:
>> * Markus Armbruster (address@hidden) wrote:
>>> In my opinion, QEMU should leave them to separate GUI shells, because
>>> doing everything in QEMU distracts from our core mission and we don't
>>> have GUI expertise[*].  One more point: building in the GUI is
>>> problematic when you don't trust the guest, because then you really want
>>> to run QEMU with least privileges.
>>
>> Given that we have a built in GUI then I can see people wanting to expand
>> it.
>
> Right, but where do you draw the line? We clearly don't have the
> active maintainer and review capacity to do anything serious with
> "ui/" (MAINTAINERS lists everything except SPICE as Odd Fixes).
>
> This is why I tend to agree with Markus' opinion here: we should
> provide enough graphical UI to make raw QEMU minimally usable,
> and leave further user-friendliness to other projects which have
> more direct interest in that.
>
> If we had more regular contributors who were actively interested
> in improving our UI layer my opinion might be different.

Or not.

QEMU is a large project.  We can do what we do only because we managed
to set up a workable hierarchy of maintainers.

Still, adding more subsystems is not free.  Not even if they come with
ready-made, capable maintainers.

I'd rather spend our limited complexity credits on our core mission.  If
people come to us with a new target and a commitment to maintain it, we
don't want to say no.  That's because targets are core.

If people come to us to make QEMU compete with GUI-providing projects
sitting on top of QEMU, I want us to say no.