[Qemu-devel] Re: Supporting hypervisor specific APIs in libvirt

[Juan Quintela <quintela@redhat.com>]

Anthony Liguori <anthony@codemonkey.ws> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I've mentioned this to a few folks already but I wanted to start a
> proper thread.
>
> We're struggling in qemu with usability and one area that concerns me
> is the disparity in features that are supported by qemu vs what's
> implemented in libvirt.
>
> This isn't necessarily libvirt's problem if it's mission is to provide
> a common hypervisor API that covers the most commonly used features.
>
> However, for qemu, we need an API that covers all of our features that
> people can develop against.  The ultimate question we need to figure
> out is, should we encourage our users to always use libvirt or should
> we build our own API for people (and libvirt) to consume.
>
> I don't think it's necessarily a big technical challenge for libvirt
> to support qemu more completely.  I think it amounts to introducing a
> series of virQemuXXXX APIs that implement qemu specific functions.
> Over time, qemu specific APIs can be deprecated in favour of more
> generic virDomain APIs.
>
> What's the feeling about this from the libvirt side of things?  Is
> there interest in support hypervisor specific interfaces should we be
> looking to provide our own management interface for libvirt to
> consume?

My problems with libvirt are:
- I can't "hack" the qemu command line.  It would be great to be able to
  edit the command line that libvirt is about to launch (yes, this is
  useful for developers, but it is an easy hack).

- monitor: I need a way to get to the monitor when going through
  libvirt, in the past you couldn't allow this, but now it looks
  possible.

- changing the emulator: It is normal for me to be using several qemu
  binaries for testing, changing it with libvirt is just a mess.

Now, why I want to use libvirt in the 1st place?
- libvirt is good at remembering details like mac addresses, disks
  positions, etc.  Compare

   virsh start foo
  versus a 300+ character long qemu command line.
- virt-viewer: I want to be able to switch consoles, period.

- networking: man, setting networking is a mess, libvirt just does it
  for you.

Now, to do suggestions. What would make it for me:
- being able to use the qemu command line -> maximum flexibility
- if that is too complicated for any reason, being able to change the
  <emulator>...</emulator> would be good enough the mayority of the
  time.  What I normally need is: use a different emulator or add some
  additional flag to qemu.

Just my 2 cents

Juan.