[Libguestfs] Could libguestfs use springfield?

[Richard W.M. Jones]

[Adding libguestfs mailing list]

On Thu, Jun 14, 2018 at 04:15:57PM +0200, Vojtěch Trefný wrote:
> 
> 
> On 06/14/2018 01:15 PM, Richard W.M. Jones wrote:
> >
> >libguestfs provides a C library and large set of tools for
> >manipulating disk images.  http://libguestfs.org/
> >
> >As part of this we provide APIs to open VM disks and do things like
> >enumerate partitions or resize logical volumes.  The actual way this
> >works currently is we run the external commands (eg. parted, lvresize)
> >inside a small virtual machine and pass the right command line options
> >or parse the output.  In some cases we're also parsing stuff out of
> >kernel /sys/block.
> >
> >We've accumulated a large amount of code to do this (I counted 60619
> >lines of code in the current version).  Here are a few examples so you
> >can see in concrete terms what I'm talking about:
> >
> >https://github.com/libguestfs/libguestfs/blob/afd1c70601c51043684a0245ce2f63d71a9cc07a/daemon/parted.c#L344
> >
> >https://github.com/libguestfs/libguestfs/blob/afd1c70601c51043684a0245ce2f63d71a9cc07a/daemon/lvm.c#L271
> >
> >Steven W pointed me to "Project Springfield" and it sort of looks like
> >it's in the same area.  Could libguestfs replace the parsing code
> >above with this?
> >
> >What might be problems: We have no python or dbus in the appliance.
> >So anything that depends on those is a non-starter.
> >
> >TBH the project webpage left me more confused than enlightened.  There
> >seem to be lots of projects (subprojects?) doing stuff with odd names
> >and no unifying philosophy, and I'm not sure if Project Springfield is
> >a thing or more of an intention.
> >
> >Rich.
> >
> 
> Hi, project springfield is a collection of existing projects,
> libblockdev is probably the "subproject" you are looking for. It is
> a plugin based C library -- we have plugins for working with btrfs,
> filesystems (ext, xfs, vfat and ntfs), lvm, mdraid, partitions etc.
> It mostly also uses the command line tools and in some cases also
> other existing libraries (libcryptsetup, libmount, libparted...).
> 
> Libblockdev Github repo: https://github.com/storaged-project/libblockdev
> and API documentation: http://storaged.org/libblockdev/
> 
> From the code you sent it looks like libblockdev covers most of the
> functionality libguestfs needs. Some functionality is missing (e.g.
> we don't support changing of uuid for lvs) but we can add these
> missing bits.
> 
> --
> Vojtech Trefny

-- 
Richard Jones, Virtualization Group, Red Hat http://people.redhat.com/~rjones
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