Dear Maintainer,

It would be nice if mmdebstrap-autopkgtest-build-qemu could create qcow2
images in addition to raw images, e.g. by calling

qemu-img convert "$raw_image" -O qcow2 "$IMAGE"

at the end.

Hi,

Quoting Benjamin Drung (2026-06-05 21:48:57)

mmdebstrap-autopkgtest-virt-qemu got added because back then, debvm was not yet
able to create images which are directly bootable by qemu as is required for
the qemu backend of autopkgtest. Some history about that is here:

https://salsa.debian.org/helmutg/debvm/-/work_items/11
https://salsa.debian.org/helmutg/debvm/-/work_items/16

But since last year, debvm now also ships the debefivm utilities which are able
to create images bootable by qemu without debefivm-run. For details, consult
the man page of debefivm-create, in the EXAMPLES section:

https://manpages.debian.org/debefivm-create

To reduce duplicated code, I'd like to either:

 * change mmdebstrap-autopkgtest-build-qemu such that it becomes a wrapper for
   debefivm-create (adding debvm to Suggests) or
 * remove mmdebstrap-autopkgtest-build-qemu because it's doing something which
   debefivm-create is able to do but worse

I'm wondering whether people still use/need mmdebstrap-autopkgtest-virt-qemu or
whether they could switch to debefivm-create for their use-case.

Thanks!

cheers, josch

I wasn't aware of debefivm-create. Thanks for the pointer.

mdebstrap-autopkgtest-build-qemu wrapping debefivm-create wrapping
mmdebstrap is to much layering IMO. I would suggest dropping mdebstrap-
autopkgtest-build-qemu.

Having to specify so many arguments for debefivm-create is a complexity
that I like to see abstracted away. I propose two solutions:

* Have an option to debefivm-create that expands to the values needed
for autopkgtest.

* or let debefivm-create support config files that contain debefivm-
create parameters. Then debvm could ship a config for autopkgtest.

Hi Benjamin.

* Benjamin Drung <bdrung@debian.org> [2026-06-08 00:54]:

I have opened:

https://salsa.debian.org/helmutg/debvm/-/merge_requests/64

Cheers Jochen

Thanks. That's a good approach to drop mmdebstrap-autopkgtest-build-
qemu.