[Libguestfs] compile libguestfs 1.19.35

[Daniel P. Berrange]

On Wed, Sep 05, 2012 at 12:46:26PM +0100, Richard W.M. Jones wrote:
> [The context for libvirt users is how to let people do
> 'make install' without having conflicts with installed copies
> of packages.]
> 
> On Wed, Sep 05, 2012 at 07:39:37AM -0400, Whit Blauvelt wrote:
> > On Wed, Sep 05, 2012 at 08:07:09AM +0100, Richard W.M. Jones wrote:
> > 
> > > It is possible to run 'make install', but we normally do not recommend
> > > you do that.  To avoid conflicts between other packages, you should
> > > build a libguestfs package for your Linux distro, which is not so
> > > easy.
> > 
> > Is there a goal at least that if a the group of programs including libvirt
> > and qemu-kvm is built and installed from tar, that it should install with
> > internal consistency regardless of underlying distro?
> > 
> > All the distros necessarily lag development here. Sometimes new features are
> > key to a particular deployment. Isn't it a useful goal to produce components
> > such that, if "make install" is used with each of them, the result should be
> > good? Is that the goal of these related projects?
> > 
> > Now days, for instance, every distro does a good LAMP stack. But earlier in
> > the development of that stack it was often best to compile it from source,
> > due to versions lagging and distro maintainers making assumptions that
> > weren't well honed. In the first few years of any new stack, shouldn't we
> > expect that many sysadmins will be in the same position?
> > 
> > It's best if there's some defined subset of programs whose "make install"
> > options, by default, will produce a coherent stack. 
> 
> I'm not sure how special libvirt & qemu are.  You could try installing
> to a local prefix (I sometimes use "./configure --prefix=$HOME/gnu").
> 
> Then you have to sort out the environment variables that need setting.
> 
> I don't think libvirt or libguestfs or qemu document what environment
> variables should be set to run an internally consistent local copy
> of the entire libvirt/KVM stack from your home directory.
> libguestfs has the "./run" script which can be modified.
> 
> Anyone got any thoughts?  I think it is a genuine concern.

libvirt will search for QEMU binaries in $PATH. So if you install QEMU
to a custom location, just make sure that location comes first in $PATH.

WRT to libvirt.so <-> libvirtd, the socket path is based on the install
prefix, so if you install libvirt to a non-standard location, you need
to make sure you are using the matched libvirt.so and libvirtd. The
easiest way todo this is just again make sure $PATH reflects your new
install location, and set LD_LIBRARY_PATH so that libguestfs finds the
custom libvirt.so too

Daniel
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