29183778af
Commit cdbe1332 neglected to document the API. So let's add some
details about the algorithm and why it was used to help future
readers understand the issues encountered.
NB: Management of the processing udev device notification is a
delicate balance between the udev process, the scheduler, and when
exactly the data from/for the socket is received. The balance is
particularly important for environments when multiple devices are
added into the system more or less simultaneously such as is done
for mdev or SRIOV. In these cases old libudev blocking on the udev
recv() occurs more frequently. It's expected that future devices
will follow similar algorithms. Even though the algorithm does
present some challenges for older OS's (such as Centos 6), trying
to rewrite the algorithm to fit both models would be more complex
and involve pulling the monitor object out of the private data
lockable object and would need to be guarded by a separate lock.
Devising such an algorithm to work around issues with older OS's
at the expense of more modern OS algorithms in newer event processing
code may result in unexpected issues, so the choice is to encourage
use of newer OS's with newer udev event processing code.
Signed-off-by: John Ferlan <jferlan@redhat.com>
Reviewed-by: Erik Skultety <eskultet@redhat.com>
Libvirt API for virtualization
Libvirt provides a portable, long term stable C API for managing the virtualization technologies provided by many operating systems. It includes support for QEMU, KVM, Xen, LXC, bhyve, Virtuozzo, VMware vCenter and ESX, VMware Desktop, Hyper-V, VirtualBox and the POWER Hypervisor.
For some of these hypervisors, it provides a stateful management daemon which runs on the virtualization host allowing access to the API both by non-privileged local users and remote users.
Layered packages provide bindings of the libvirt C API into other languages including Python, Perl, PHP, Go, Java, OCaml, as well as mappings into object systems such as GObject, CIM and SNMP.
Further information about the libvirt project can be found on the website:
License
The libvirt C API is distributed under the terms of GNU Lesser General
Public License, version 2.1 (or later). Some parts of the code that are
not part of the C library may have the more restrictive GNU General
Public License, version 2.1 (or later). See the files COPYING.LESSER
and COPYING for full license terms & conditions.
Installation
Libvirt uses the GNU Autotools build system, so in general can be built and installed with the usual commands. For example, to build in a manner that is suitable for installing as root, use:
$ ./configure --prefix=/usr --sysconfdir=/etc --localstatedir=/var
$ make
$ sudo make install
While to build & install as an unprivileged user
$ ./configure --prefix=$HOME/usr
$ make
$ make install
The libvirt code relies on a large number of 3rd party libraries. These will
be detected during execution of the configure script and a summary printed
which lists any missing (optional) dependencies.
Contributing
The libvirt project welcomes contributions in many ways. For most components the best way to contribute is to send patches to the primary development mailing list. Further guidance on this can be found on the website:
https://libvirt.org/contribute.html
Contact
The libvirt project has two primary mailing lists:
- libvirt-users@redhat.com (for user discussions)
- libvir-list@redhat.com (for development only)
Further details on contacting the project are available on the website: