Virt-Manager has no grouping for VM's?

kingofmanjar0 · 8 May 2022 11:49

It seems that all VM’s of same type (QEMU/KVM) are listed in a plain one-dimensional list. So, Virt-Mananger has no grouping feature, or is the setting hidden somewhere? I mean, I only have a few VM’s now, but what if someone has tens of VM’s? VirtualBox and Vmware had grouping and this should not be a difficult feature to implement, so if there is no grouping, I wonder why this feature has not been added.

Vmware

VirtualBox

xabbu · 8 May 2022 12:00

The idea has been rejected multiple times. Feel free to argue with the red hat people about it.

one of the first:
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1193303

last one I could find on github:

Some other rejected ideas:

github.com

virt-manager/virt-manager/blob/main/DESIGN.md#previously-rejectedremoved-ui-elements

##  virt-manager UI design philosophy

**virt-manager** is a UI toolbox-style frontend for libvirt. It provides UI access to common virt management tasks and operations. virt-manager aims to provide a simple UI, but not too simple that it excludes valid usecases. virt-manager prioritizes stability over features. Given the user definitions defined below, our goals are:

* **_Basic virt users_** should be able to meet their needs with virt-manager.
* **_Intermediate virt users_** should find virt-manager sufficiently flexible for their needs.
* **_Advanced virt users_** will not find explicit UI support for their advanced use cases, but virt-manager should still function correctly in the face of their manually configured advanced virt usage. virt-manager should not get in their way.

Here are some things that virt-manager explicitly is not:

* **gnome-boxes**: a heavily desktop integrated VM manager with an emphasis on UI design and simplifying virt management. They prioritize a seamless designed experience over flexibility, our goals are different.
* **virt-viewer/remote-viewer**, **vncviewer**: our graphical VM window should 'just work' for most needs but any advanced console configuration is left up to these other better suited tools.
* **VirtualBox**, **VMWare Workstation**: It's a nice idea to aim to be the equivalent of those apps for the QEMU+KVM+Libvirt stack. But to get there would require a level of resource investment that is unlikely to ever happen.
* **oVirt**, **Openstack**: virt-manager does not aim to support management of many hosts with many VMs. virt-manager won't reject this case and we try within reason to keep it working. But the UI is not designed for it and we will not change the UI to facilitate these style of usecases.

## How do we evaluate UI changes

When is it worth it to expose something in the UI? Here's some criteria we will use:

* **How many users do we expect will use it**: This is handwavy of course but some things come up in email/IRC discussion regularly, and some are mentioned once in 5 years.

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kingofmanjar0 · 9 May 2022 05:11

Damn. I don’t understand the developers’ arguments that it would require UI change that affects a lot of things. It is not on by default, so people who don’t need grouping would not even see the difference. And I am not even an advanced user. At best, an intermediate user and most likely a beginner user. Still, I need some sort of grouping when I have 10+ VM’s. I mean, I don’t run all 10+ VM’s constantly, but when I am testing a thing, I could create a few VM’s, so it could easily be over 10+. Is that a rare use-case?

Anyway, since it has been explicitly rejected, arguing with the developers would be waste of my time. I guess, I will create my own launcher or something.

system · 11 May 2022 19:12

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