c615c14246
For snapshots, virsh already has a (shockingly naive [1]) client-side topological sorter with the --tree option. But as a series of REDEFINE calls must be presented in topological order, it's worth letting the server do the work for us, especially since the server can give us a topological sorting with less effort than our naive client reconstruction. [1] The XXX comment in virshSnapshotListCollect() about --tree being O(n^3) is telling; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Topological_sorting is an interesting resource describing Kahn's algorithm and other approaches for O(n) topological sorting for anyone motivated to use a more elegant algorithm than brute force - but that doesn't affect this patch. For now, I am purposefully NOT implementing virsh fallback code to provide a topological sort when the flag was rejected as unsupported; we can worry about that down the road if users actually demonstrate that they use new virsh but old libvirt to even need the fallback. (The code we use for --tree could be repurposed to be such a fallback, whether or not we keep it naive or improve it to be faster - but again, no one should spend time on a fallback without evidence that we need it.) The test driver makes it easy to test: $ virsh -c test:///default ' snapshot-create-as test a snapshot-create-as test c snapshot-create-as test b snapshot-list test snapshot-list test --topological snapshot-list test --descendants a snapshot-list test --descendants a --topological snapshot-list test --tree snapshot-list test --tree --topological ' Without any flags, virsh does client-side sorting alphabetically, and lists 'b' before 'c' (even though 'c' is the parent of 'b'); with the flag, virsh skips sorting, and you can now see that the server handed back data in a correct ordering. As shown here with a simple linear chain, there isn't any other possible ordering, so --tree mode doesn't seem to care whether --topological is used. But it is possible to compose more complicated DAGs with multiple children to a parent (representing reverting back to a snapshot then creating more snapshots along those divergent execution timelines), where it is then possible (but not guaranteed) that adding the --topological flag changes the --tree output (the client-side --tree algorithm breaks ties based on alphabetical sorting between two nodes that share the same parent, while the --topological sort skips the client-side alphabetical sort and ends up exposing the server's internal order for siblings, whether that be historical creation order or dependent on a random hash seed). But even if the results differ, they will still be topologically correct. Signed-off-by: Eric Blake <eblake@redhat.com> Reviewed-by: Ján Tomko <jtomko@redhat.com> Reviewed-by: Daniel P. Berrangé <berrange@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: