[bug#27521] [PATCH] guix system: Add "--file-system-type" option.

[ludo@gnu.org (Ludovic Courtès)]

Danny Milosavljevic <dannym@scratchpost.org> skribis:

> On Mon, 03 Jul 2017 13:56:40 +0200
> ludo@gnu.org (Ludovic Courtès) wrote:

[...]

>> > +         (option '(#\f "file-system-type") #t #f
>> > +                 (lambda (opt name arg result)
>> > +                   (alist-cons 'file-system-type arg
>> > +                               result)))  
>> 
>> I’m not sure we want to use the “-f” shortcut here.  Initially I thought
>> we’d have -f/--format for the image format, 
>
> How about "-t" like mkfs has?  Or only providing the long option?

“-t” sounds good to me.

>>i.e., qcow2 vs. raw (are
>> there any others?).
>
> Good question.  It seems the image format is an implementation detail of VMs where they probably can use some areas for rollback/versioning information (where the guest OS is none the wiser).
>
> On the other hand, the filesystem type is something that the guest OS needs to know and not an implementation detail.
>
> I had actually added a disk-image-format option to guix/scripts/system.scm before and then thought better of it because guix system vm-image uses qcow2 and guix system disk-image uses raw and I can't think of any more - so it would be redundant.
>
> Even the ISO9660 fs will just be stored on a "raw" image.

Right, so how do you suggest that we expose qcow2 vs. raw?

Ludo’.