On Tue, Mar 10, 2020 at 07:15:29AM -0500, Eric Blake wrote:
On 3/10/20 4:47 AM, Kashyap Chamarthy wrote:
[...]
<digression>
Ah, didn't realize the inconsistency of 'convert' lacking the '-F' shorthand ... which reminds me, there are at least _three_ ways that I know of, to specify backing file format with 'create':
$ qemu-img create -f qcow2 -o 'backing_file=./base.raw,backing_fmt=raw' ./overlay1.qcow2 $ qemu-img create -f qcow2 -b ./base.raw -o backing_fmt=raw overlay1.qcow2 $ qemu-img create -f qcow2 -b ./base.raw -F raw ./overlay1.qcow2
I'm wondering about the consistency of having all the above three supported for other operations too. Now I at least know 'convert' lacks the "-F".
The -o forms (backing_file= and backing_fmt=) always work. Various commands then have additional shorthand: -b/-F for create, -B for convert. You're right that we aren't very consistent, but I'm reluctant to change the inconsistencies in this patch
Oh, I wasn't implying to tackle the inconsistency as part of this patch, or series. Hence the 'digression' :-) Was just wondering out loud.
(at one point in the past, we tried to get rid of the shorthand and force all users to go through -o, but that broke too many clients that were depending on the undocumented shorthand, so we documented the existing shorthand instead).
Fair enough; let's not touch these things for now. -- /kashyap