[vbox-dev] A long-list of long-waiting feature-requests

[Klaus Espenlaub]

Alexey Eremenko wrote:
> Hi all !
> 
> During the years I have created many feature-requests.

Any feedback is appreciated, and as you'll see below, most of the 
proposals are on our todo list.
> 
> I would like to know if developers could take a second look at those
> interesting ideas:

I'll comment inline, as adding answers to each defect won't change the 
state of most of them.

> 1. [feature-request] Please add Clone VDI command to Virtual Disk Manager GUI
> http://www.virtualbox.org/ticket/449

Will be done whenever we have time for this. There's plenty of other GUI 
changes pending (like being able to rename images, or to create all 
kinds of VDI/VMDK/VHD/... images).

> 2. feature-request: Hardware Virtualization GUI Info Utility
> http://www.virtualbox.org/ticket/1735

That's indirectly already available in 2.2 - so bear with us that this 
has not the highest priority. HW emulation is on by default, and grayed 
out if not available. And all the gory details you never wanted to know 
about are in VBox.log.

> 3. [feature-request] Make virtual monitor (screen/display) customizable
> http://www.virtualbox.org/ticket/715

Again a "nice to have" kind of feature which requires lots of work to 
implement. We'll get to it eventually.

> 4. [feature-request] Revolutionary CLI for mass-management of Virtual
> Linux Servers
> http://www.virtualbox.org/ticket/893

The idea sounds simple, but is quite complicated in the context of 
virtualization (it's easy for containers). Again, it's planned to have 
this feature, but there are plenty of security issues to keep in mind. 
Every hole we drill into the complete separation between host and VM 
needs to be carefully evaluated, we try to avoid security alerts if we 
can help it.

> 5. [feature-request] Shared Folders should use ISO9660 filesystem
> instead of vboxfs
> http://www.virtualbox.org/ticket/1970

I really don't see what the original proposal would achieve - ISO 
filesystem can't be easily created on the fly (what happens if a file is 
created/deleted on the host side in a shared folder while the VM is 
running?). You can already mount ISOs without any difficulty, so I fail 
to see what this would really change. That's essentially what other 
comments in that feature request also say. Comment 3 there is along the 
lines of what we planned as another mechanism, again whenever we find time.

Klaus