Re: Libvir: a simple C virtualization control library

[Daniel Veillard <veillard@redhat.com>]

On Thu, Dec 15, 2005 at 11:26:12AM -0600, Hollis Blanchard wrote:
> On Thursday 15 December 2005 09:03, Daniel Veillard wrote:
> >  The libvir library is born from the need for a simpler userland C library
> > to watch and control Xen domains.
> 
> I'm curious why libxc isn't good enough. Is the emphasis here on "simpler"? 
> >From what I've seen of it so far, I'm not sure I'd call libxc overly 
> complicated...

  I would say simpler to use, I'm not really targetting the same kind of
developpers I guess application and tools developpers not system programmers.
To me libxc is very low level, the high level abstractions are available on
top of the python classes but not at the C level. Basically if you want to
reuse Xen at the application level, you are pushed to Python + GPL which
is not necessarily an easy spot to stay in.

> The reason I'm interested is that right now the PPC port is carrying some 
> libxc hacks for domain creation, which already have caused merge conflicts. 
> There's no pressing need for us to throw out our hacks at the moment, but 
> longer term if it's difficult for us to fit into libxc then maybe libvir 
> would be a better fit.

  I don't think of libvir as a replacement for libxc, so a-priori I'm not sure
it really fits, especially as libvir has no domain creation API yet, but the
library will go where the user base will drive it.

Daniel

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