[Pkg-libvirt-maintainers] Plans for libguestfs

[Hilko Bengen]

During last week, I finally got some packages for libguestfs and
bindings done. The repository at
git://anonscm.debian.org/pkg-libvirt/libguestfs.git has been updated to
1.10.6-2 which I have also uploaded to experimental. (The packages
haven't appeared in the archive yet, though.) 

Before shifting my attention to the 1.12 release, I'd like to make sure
that things work as expected. Please test the packages. I haven't had
any opportunity to test anything so far because during this last week I
lacked access to a KVM-capable machine.

An outstanding issue is how the appliance, the archive of files, mostly
executables and libraries, needed to operate the VM, should be handled:
Having it generated at build-time and shipping it as part of a .deb
would be suboptimal both from a security and a maintenance perspective.
For now, I have modified the build system a bit so that the build script
and package lists are generated. I have added a README.Debian that tells
the user how to call what script to manually generate the appliance
after the package has been installed.

I think that there should be a /usr/sbin/update-guestfs-appliance script
that may be called from postinst if the user asks via Debconf.

Another issue has to do with the Python bindings: The
autoconf/automake-based build system will only build the bindings for
one Python version (which happens to be 2.6 at the moment). I would like
to change that, but I haven't found an easy way short of rebuilding
(almost) the wohle package for every Python version.

Any comments and patches/contributions are welcome, of course.

Cheers,
-Hilko