[Engine-devel] Forward comp[atibility of OVF

[Mike Kolesnik]

> On 22/03/12 11:04, Mike Kolesnik wrote:
> > Hi,
> > 
> > I wanted to know if we want to support forward compatibility of OVF
> > format, which is used for export/import of VMs/VM Templates.
> > 
> > For example,
> > I create a VM in a 3.1 system, export it to an export Domain.
> > Should I be able to import this VM on a 3.0 system?
> > 
> 
> I think we should support only backwards compatibility no need for
> forward compatibility.
> The question is should we block importing such a VM (that it's
> version
> is not something the engine identifies) I think we should block it
> otherwise the engine will import the VM which can fail sometimes with
> errors like NullPointerException which will end-up being filed as a
> BZ.

I agree that this should be blocked, however to do so for older versions will require extra work that i don't know if we need or not..

> 
> 
> > Obviously, backwards compatibility (from older version to newer) is
> > desired and is kept, but do we really need forward compatibility
> > also?
> > 
> > The reason I'm asking is some changes that need to be done in
> > current
> > OVF format to support new features. These new changes will be
> > backwards-compatible with old OVF formats, but is it desirable for
> > them
> > to be forward compatible?
> > 
> > Regards,
> > Mike
> > 
> > 
> > 
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> 
>