[libvirt] [PATCH] virsh edit command

[Daniel Veillard]

On Tue, Jul 29, 2008 at 05:55:13PM +0100, Richard W.M. Jones wrote:
> On Tue, Jul 29, 2008 at 05:50:30PM +0100, John Levon wrote:
> > On Tue, Jul 29, 2008 at 05:46:34PM +0100, Richard W.M. Jones wrote:
> > > Do you think a graphical libvirt XML format editor is a good solution?
> > 
> > This would help enormously. You could even start it from 'virsh edit' if
> > $DISPLAY is set.
> > 
> > I've no idea about the general tools out there for generating UI from
> > XML, but there has to be something.
> 
> DV??

  :-)

I can probably be found on record in a few place suggesting to not
inflict XML directly to users as what you frequently get is a very
annoyed person and a not-wellformed instance in the end. Adding vi
as the editor I really hope no journalist will ever try that feature :-)

But this can be useful for those who know what they are doing.

Unfortunately, general purpose XML editors, are very complex, usually
large beast, and not a good solution for a the problem. There exist
some specific XML formats editors but they hide the syntax based on
the semantic of the XML format (e.g. the glade UI editor) but are
not suitable as a result.

I don't think there is a good option between editing as text using
$EDITOR and a dedicated editing tool. Ideally this could be the 
configuration dialog of virt-manager separated as a standalone 
application for coherency and minimizing external dependancies. If
not present fallback to $EDITOR, so IMHO having the edit command 
now even if the graphical editor is not here is just a first step,
I agree with this approach.

Daniel

-- 
Red Hat Virtualization group http://redhat.com/virtualization/
Daniel Veillard      | virtualization library  http://libvirt.org/
veillard at redhat.com  | libxml GNOME XML XSLT toolkit  http://xmlsoft.org/
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