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

Antoine Martin antoine at nagafix.co.uk
Fri Apr 9 18:22:41 UTC 2010


Daniel P. Berrange wrote:
> On Fri, Apr 09, 2010 at 03:53:37PM +0100, Antoine Martin wrote:
>> Daniel P. Berrange wrote:
>>> On Fri, Apr 09, 2010 at 03:31:37PM +0100, Antoine Martin wrote:
>>>> [snip]
>>>>>> * not everything is exposed via libvirt:
>>>>>> virsh can retrieve vncdisplay
>>>>>> but libvirt (or at least the python bindings) does not. How come?
>>>>>> This happens to be one thing I need for writing a libvirt backend for my
>>>>>> virtual desktop software.
>>>>> The 'virsh vncdisplay' command is simply fetching the XML doc for the
>>>>> guest and then extracting the VNC port using a xpath expression
>>>>>
>>>>>    /domain/devices/graphics[@type='vnc']/@port
>>>>>
>>>>> So for python you'd want to just get an XML handling module and do similar.
>>>> Yes, I saw that in the virsh code.
>>>> Shouldn't this be part of the libvirt api proper??
>>>> Isn't it supposed to shield us from dealing with files and XML?
>>> It isn't scalable to add APIs for extracting each possible piece of info
>>> from the XML. All languages have APIs for extracting data from XML using
>>> XPath (or DOM). Thus it is better to leave that flexibility to the apps
>>> rather than hardcoding APIs for it in libvirt. The XML schemas/docs are
>>> a formal part of the libvit API, so we're not trying to sheild that from
>>> apps.
>>>
>> I was thinking of something like:
>> domain.get_attribute("vncdisplay")
>>
>> Because it's a shame to have to use virsh as a wrapper (or XML file
>> parsing) and re-do all the work that was done to get to the domain
>> object when all your really want is just an attribute..
> 
> You can already do that very simply in python using lxml
>  
>    from lxml import etree
>    tree = etree.parse(domain.XMLDesc())
>    r = tree.xpath('/domain/devices/graphics[@type='vnc']/@port')
Thanks for that!

> So adding an API for this is only saving at best 2 lines of code, and is 
> much less flexible in what it can do
Understood. Could this code be wrapped libvirt side with something like:
domain.xpath('/domain/devices/graphics[@type='vnc']/@port')
So that libvirt consumers dont need an explicit dependency on XML libraries?

Just another question that came to mind: how do I get notified when
something happens to a domain?
IE: how can I fire a script whenever a domain is created/added/stopped?

Thanks
Antoine

> 
> Daniel




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