Re: [RFC] Unify KVM kernel-space and user-space code into a single project

Antoine Martin
2010-03-22T20:00:41Z

On 03/23/2010 02:15 AM, Anthony Liguori wrote:
> On 03/22/2010 12:55 PM, Avi Kivity wrote:
>>> Lets look at the ${HOME}/.qemu/qmp/ enumeration method suggested by
>>> Anthony.
>>> There's numerous ways that this can break:
>>
>> I don't like it either. We have libvirt for enumerating guests.
>
> We're stuck in a rut with libvirt and I think a lot of the
> dissatisfaction with qemu is rooted in that. It's not libvirt that's
> the probably, but the relationship between qemu and libvirt.
+1
The obvious reason why so many people still use shell scripts rather
than libvirt is because if it just doesn't provide what they need.
Every time I've looked at it (and I've been looking for a better
solution for many years), it seems that it would have provided most of
the things I needed, but the remaining bits were unsolvable.

Shell scripts can be ugly, but you get total control.

Antoine
> We add a feature to qemu and maybe after six month it gets exposed by
> libvirt. Release time lines of the two projects complicate the
> situation further. People that write GUIs are limited by libvirt
> because that's what they're told to use and when they need something
> simple, they're presented with first getting that feature implemented
> in qemu, then plumbed through libvirt.
>
> It wouldn't be so bad if libvirt was basically a passthrough interface
> to qemu but it tries to model everything in a generic way which is
> more or less doomed to fail when you're adding lots of new features
> (as we are).
>
> The list of things that libvirt doesn't support and won't any time
> soon is staggering.
>
> libvirt serves an important purpose, but we need to do a better job in
> qemu with respect to usability. We can't just punt to libvirt.
>
> Regards,
>
> Anthony Liguori
>
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