Libguestfs - Feb 2014 - [PATCH supermin v3] Supermin 5 rewrite.

This is the first really working version of supermin 5.

This version can prepare a supermin appliance, and build a full
appliance from a supermin appliance.  See examples/build-basic-vm.sh
for example usage.  Read the updated supermin(1) man page for the
details.

Among the improvements:

 - Package names are used instead of hostfiles.  This should improve
   robustness, since adding a new file to a package or moving files
   around won't break the appliance.

   From the libguestfs point of view this will also allow us to split
   libguestfs dependencies into subpackges (libguestfs-xfs,
   libguestfs-ntfs, etc).

 - It uses the current package database to do dependency resolution,
   (instead of yum/apt).  This is considerably faster.

 - It only needs to download packages that contain configuration
   files, which results in much less network bandwidth used.
   (--use-installed is supported as before to completely eliminate
   network usage)

 - --if-newer and --lock options move the locking into supermin
   (previously it was done in libguestfs).  This makes supermin much
   easier to consume from other programs.

 - The --if-newer option checks the RPM database instead of iterating
   over the filesystem, making it much faster (a single stat versus
   1000s of stats across the filesystem).

 - You can create a chroot filesystem from a supermin appliance.

Currently missing:

 - support for Debian / dpkg

 - support for other distros (that were supported by v4)

I intend to add at least Debian support before pushing anything.

Some dropped features:

 - -f cpio is no longer supported.  We didn't use this in libguestfs
   since 2010.  It would not be hard to add this back.

 - --user/--group options.  We added these for the benefit of virt-v2v
   but it's not clear if they are needed.  Easy to add back if
   required.

 - You can no longer create a supermin from package files.  This was
   never used by callers, as far as I know.

 - You can no longer exclude packages after depsolving.  However you
   can still exclude files, which is nearly the same thing in
   practice.

Rich.

Since Zimbra seems to have consumed the second email, I've temporarily
uploaded the patch here:

http://oirase.annexia.org/tmp/0001-Supermin-5-rewrite.patch.txt

Rich.

-- 
Richard Jones, Virtualization Group, Red Hat http://people.redhat.com/~rjones
Fedora Windows cross-compiler. Compile Windows programs, test, and
build Windows installers. Over 100 libraries supported.
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/MinGW