Fedora xen - Dec 2005 - Libvir: a simple C virtualization control library

This mail is to present a new project being started:

       Libvir: a simple C virtualization control library

 The libvir library is born from the need for a simpler userland C library to
watch and control Xen domains. Among the design goal are:

   - being able to provide API and ABI guarantee
   - LGPL to be able to use it in a variety of contexts
   - pure C, minimizing dependancies
   - aiming at full documentation coverage

 A typical example of use case should be the applet displaying local Xen
domains status in Fedora Core desktop. 

 The current state is a small library to get informations and interract
with existing domains, the design is not frozen, though the existing code
should work as is, it is considered mostly as a way to bootstrap and seed
the project, we are seeking interest from others. The library could be
extended in various ways potentally supporting other virtualization
mechanisms like QEmu, allowing to start new domains, etc. as long as the
API is kept simple enough. 

 The project is hosted at :
      http://libvir.org/
API  http://libvir.org/html/libvir-libvir.html 

See the download page at http://libvir.org/downloads.html to get sources
or CVS checkout, and https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/libvir-list
for the mailing-list informations, which would be the best place to discuss
this for those interested in this project,

   yours,

Daniel

-- 
Daniel Veillard      | Red Hat http://redhat.com/
veillard@redhat.com  | libxml GNOME XML XSLT toolkit  http://xmlsoft.org/
http://veillard.com/ | Rpmfind RPM search engine http://rpmfind.net/

Interesting.  Can you expand on how this is different than the  
services currently provided by libxc?  Is the idea to simply have a  
wrapper around libxc that can be LGPL and, possibly, be extended to  
work with other virtualization mechanisms?  Or does libvir provide  
services not found in libxc?

Thanks,
bryan


On Dec 15, 2005, at 10:05 AM, Daniel Veillard wrote:
>   This mail is to present a new project being started:
>
>        Libvir: a simple C virtualization control library
>
>  The libvir library is born from the need for a simpler userland C  
> library to watch and control Xen domains. Among the design goal are:
>
>    - being able to provide API and ABI guarantee
>    - LGPL to be able to use it in a variety of contexts
>    - pure C, minimizing dependancies
>    - aiming at full documentation coverage

-
Bryan D. Payne
Graduate Student, Computer Science
Georgia Tech Information Security Center
http://www.bryanpayne.org

On Thu, Dec 15, 2005 at 10:19:17AM -0500, Bryan D. Payne
wrote:
> Interesting.  Can you expand on how this is different than the  
> services currently provided by libxc?  Is the idea to simply have a  
> wrapper around libxc that can be LGPL and, possibly, be extended to  
> work with other virtualization mechanisms?  Or does libvir provide  
> services not found in libxc?
  It is not using libxc for a couple of reasons:
    - to decouple the API from Xen, with the hope it will
      help provide API stability with an intermediate abstraction
    - due to the licence: if the LGPL library requires to link with
      a GPL library well the resulting programs can only be used
      under the GPL licence.

It is smaller than libxc in term of capabilities, the goal is not 
to try to match those exactly, it can be expanded if there is demand
though but it''s more about providing generic services. For example
there is an API do dump running domain informations as an XML chunk
that could be used as well for different kind of virtualization engine,
and is more high level than what libxc provides.

Daniel

-- 
Daniel Veillard      | Red Hat http://redhat.com/
veillard@redhat.com  | libxml GNOME XML XSLT toolkit  http://xmlsoft.org/
http://veillard.com/ | Rpmfind RPM search engine http://rpmfind.net/