[Qemu-devel] Re: QEMU GUI-Frontend based on Libvert API

[Anthony Liguori <anthony@codemonkey.ws>]

On Fri, 21 Jul 2006 14:37:10 -0400, Evan Paul wrote:
>
> The libVirt project is a community-sponsored project that aims to bring
> more simplicity and standards to the Linux VM world. At its core,
> libVirt is a C toolkit that provides interaction with virtualization
> capabilities of the Linux operating system (and those related to Linux).

You make it sound so professional :-)

> Currently, there is a project called Virt-Manager that is building a
> GUI-Frontend using the LibVirt API. More info on the Virt-Manager
> project can be found here:
> http://people.redhat.com/berrange/virt-manager/
> 
> For me, I personally like the idea and focus of libVirt project and
> would like to see if any QEMU developers from the list would have an
> interest to team up with me to develop an open source GUI-Frontend based
> on the LibVirt API.

Why would you create a second GUI interface when virt-manager already
exists as a libvirt GUI front-end?

As far as I know, the big hurdle for QEMU and libvirt right now is not any
GUI aspects (VNC would work just fine).  It's interacting with QEMU.  Xen
provides an XML-RPC interface to managing instances whereas QEMU only
really provides the monitor interface.  Of course, there's still a bit of
work to do before libvirt uses actually uses that interface (it currently
uses the older S-Expression/HTTP interface).  Basically, there's quite a
bit of work to do in libvirt before you could even start writing a GUI for
QEMU.

I have toyed around with the idea of writing an XML-RPC front-end to QEMU
(with the idea of bridging the gap for libvirt).  DV also had a patch
floating around to add a socket management interface to QEMU (although now
there is a TCP character device so I presume his patch is unnecessary).

My first cut at an XML-RPC front-end for QEMU:

http://hg.codemonkey.ws/qemu-rpcd/

Regards,

Anthony Liguori