Re: Status for the release

[Alexander Larsson <alexl redhat com>]

On Wed, 2012-08-29 at 15:27 +0300, Zeeshan Ali (Khattak) wrote:
> On Wed, Aug 29, 2012 at 1:31 PM, Alexander Larsson <alexl redhat com> wrote:
> > On Tue, 2012-08-28 at 15:29 +0200, Alexander Larsson wrote:
> >> On Tue, 2012-08-28 at 14:55 +0200, Marc-André Lureau wrote:
> >> > On Tue, Aug 28, 2012 at 2:47 PM, Alexander Larsson <alexl redhat com> wrote:
> >> > > It certainly makes a lot more sense to have this in the properties page.
> >> > > In fact thats where i went looking for it.
> >> >
> >> > We alreay have context-specific menu entries: fullscreen, properties.
> >> > To me "force shutdown" is not a "under the hood" action or a property,
> >> > rather something that should be available immediately when using a
> >> > Box, somewhere close to the topbar. But I'll let designer sort out
> >> > this issue, as I don't have stronger arguments.
> >>
> >> I don't have an opinion as to how "under the hood" the action is, but
> >> the app menu just doesn't seem to be made for actions that affect i.e.
> >> whats currently selected in one of the apps windows, but rather toplevel
> >> things like: About, help, open new window, quit app, perferences.
> >>
> >> However, I see that in this mockup:
> >> https://raw.github.com/gnome-design-team/gnome-mockups/master/boxes/boxes-menu.png
> >> the "properties" menu item is there, which seems to be a similar kind of
> >> context-sensitive operation as "force shutdown", so I'm also not sure
> >> what the deal is.
> >>
> >> So, whats the right place? App menu, toolbar, or propertied page. I
> >> guess we need to designers to fight it out!
> >
> > I asked jimmac, and here is the new mockup:
> > https://raw.github.com/gnome-design-team/gnome-mockups/master/boxes/boxes-properties.png
> 
> Looks good but I wonder if it will work because when you want to force
> shutdown a VM, its most probably hung and I'm not sure one can connect
> to the VM when its hung (especially if its qemu thats hung, not the
> guest). Properties view currently can only be  reached when you are
> connected to the VM AFAIK.
> 
> Maybe we should have a context-menu that gives either or both of
> 'force-shutdown' and 'Properties' option?

I think we should allow getting to the properties dialog in general also
for non-running boxes. This is what you want to do when i.e. changing
the ram or disksize too. Having to start the vm, change the setting and
then restart is just weird, and feels "unsafe" (although we don't
actually change these during runtime, so it should be safe).

However, given how close the release is and how much work all this turns
out to be, and the fact that we *do* have a force shutdown now (although
in a weird place) I think we can punt this to the next release.

Instead we should focus on this release on:

* Fix vm scaling for the case where the perfect guest drivers are not
  installed.
* Show status information in toolbar during vm "start"
* Allow ram/disk size change in install wizard
* Try to figure out a way to show the difference between off and
  hibernated in the collection view.
* Make the toolbar harder to pop up in fullscreen mode