[libvirt] [PATCH for 1.2.7 1/8] Introduce domain_capabilities

[Daniel P. Berrange]

On Wed, Jul 02, 2014 at 10:32:59AM -0400, John Ferlan wrote:
> I was trying to envision use cases - that is how is this expected to be
> used and what "knowledge" is assumed of the caller/user vs. being
> designed to a more naive user trying to glean information about what's
> available. You have a very specific use case described - can I determine
> if vfio is supported, but that requires someone knowing quite a bit of
> information that isn't easily accessible unless you read sources or have
> a bit of history built up.
> 
> For the domcapabilities command that eventually gets added - how does
> one know what to provide for the 4 options without knowing a bit about
> the environment. It seems the assumption is the user knows to pass
> certain elements.
> 
> The 'virttype' is pretty easy - that comes from the connection - so I
> wonder why it's a parameter to be provided. Does one really have to have
> a connection to get the data?
> 
> The 'emulatorbin' is less obvious. If it's not passed, there is a way to
> get the default value given that you have a virttype, an os type, and an
> os arch using virCapabilitiesDefaultGuestEmulator().  What if someone
> provides "/usr/bin/qemu-kvm" or "/usr/libexec/qemu-kvm" or is there an
> expectation of /usr/bin/qemu-system-x86_64?
> 
> The 'arch' requires a bit more knowledge, but is certainly "obtainable"
> as a default by the current host arch, right?  There's also
> virCapabilitiesDefaultGuestArch().  However, if someone was looking to
> find out what was running on the remote connection (not the local
> machine), then that assumption would be incorrect. Seems we should be
> able to figure out what arch is associated with the connection.
> 
> I think 'machine' is perhaps the most odd to provide; however, like arch
> and emulatorbin, there is virCapabilitiesDefaultGuestMachine() to help
> you out.  For this if one passed "pc" does that work - or do they have
> to pass something like "pc-i440fx-1.6" with the next question being how
> would they know to generate that?

The valid values for all those parameters are listed in the main
<capabilities> XML under the <guest> sections. The app is of course
free to ask about support for other non-listed values if they have
a custom emulator binary they're passing in.

Regards,
Daniel
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