Re: [Qemu-devel] Re: [libvirt] Libvirt debug API

[Anthony Liguori]

On 04/24/2010 04:46 AM, Avi Kivity wrote:
> On 04/23/2010 09:29 PM, Anthony Liguori wrote:
> > > Maybe.  We'll still have issues.  For example, sVirt: if a QMP 
> > > command names a labeled resource, the non-libvirt user will have no 
> > > way of knowing how to label it.
> >
> >
> > This is orthogonal to QMP and has to do strictly with how libvirt 
> > prepares a resource for qemu.
>
>
> It's not orthogonal.  If you allow qmp access behind libvirt's back, 
> it's a problem that you will have.

My point was, if libvirt is just exposing raw qemu features, then it 
should be possible for qemu to arbitrate concurrent access.  If libvirt 
implements features on top of qemu, then no other third party will be 
able to co-exist with those features without interacting with qemu.  
It's an impossible problem for qemu to solve (arbitrating access to 
state stored in a third party management app).

> > 1) Allow libvirt users to access features of qemu that are not 
> > exposed through libvirt
>
> That's an artificial problem.  If libvirt exposes all features, you 
> don't need to solve it.

It won't.  Otherwise, we wouldn't be having this discussion.

> > 2) Provide a means for non-libvirt users to interact with qemu
>
> We have qmp.  It doesn't do multiple guest management.  I think it's 
> reasonable to have a qemud which does (and also does sVirt and the 
> zillion other things libvirt does) provided we remove them from 
> libvirt (long term).  The only problem is that it's a lot of effort.

It depends on what things you think are important.  A lot of libvirt's 
complexity is based on the fact that it uses a daemon and needs to deal 
with the security implications of that.  You don't need explicit 
labelling if you don't use a daemon.  This is really the qemu model (as 
opposed to the xend model).  In theory, it does support this with the 
session urls but they are currently second-class citizens in libvirt.  
The remote dispatch also adds a fair bit of complexity and at least for 
the use-cases I'm interested in, it's not an important feature.

> > 3) Provide a unified and interoperable view of the world for 
> > non-libvirt and libvirt users
>
> This problem can be solved by the non-libvirt users adopting libvirt, 
> or the libvirt users dropping libvirt.  I don't understand why we need 
> to add interoperability between users who choose an interoperability 
> library and users who don't choose an interoperability library.

What I'd like to avoid is user confusion.  Should a user use libvirt or 
libqemu?  If they make a decision to use libqemu and then down the road 
want to use libvirt, how hard is it to switch?  Fragmentation hurts the 
ecosystem and discourages good applications from existing.  I think it's 
our responsibility to ensure there's a good management API that exists 
for qemu that we can actively recommend to our users.  libvirt is very 
good at typical virtualization uses of qemu but qemu is much more than 
just that and has lots of advanced features.

> > For (1), we all agree that the best case scenario would be for 
> > libvirt to support every qemu feature.  I think we can also all agree 
> > though that this is not really practical and certainly not practical 
> > for developers since there is a development cost associated with 
> > libvirt support (to model an API appropriately).
>
> All except me, perhaps.
>
> We already have two layers of feature modeling: first, we mostly 
> emulate real life, not invent new features.  PCI hotplug existed long 
> before qemu had support for it.  Second, we do give some thought into 
> how we expose it through QMP.  libvirt doesn't have to invent it 
> again, it only has to expose it through its lovely xml and C APIs.

That's not what the libvirt community wants to do.  We're very bias.  
We've made decisions about how features should be exposed and what 
features should be included.  We want all of those features exposed 
exactly how we've implemented them because we think it's the right way.

I'm not sure there's an obvious way forward unless we decide that there 
is going to be two ways to interact with qemu.  One way is through the 
libvirt world-view and the other is through a more qemu centric view.  
The problem then becomes allowing those two models to co-exist happily 
together.

The alternative is to get libvirt to just act as a thin layer to expose 
qemu features directly.  But honestly, what's the point of libvirt if 
they did that?  For the most part, the pool management is not 
virtualization specific and you could have libvirt provide that 
functionality without it knowing a thing about qemu.

> > The new API proposed addresses (1) by allowing a user to drill down 
> > to the QMP context.  It's a good solution IMHO and I think we all 
> > agree that there's an inherent risk to this that users will have to 
> > evaluate on a case-by-case basis.  It's a good stop-gap though.
>
> Agree.
>
> > (2) is largely addressed by QMP and a config file.  I'd like to see a 
> > nice C library, but I think a lot of other folks are happy with JSON 
> > support in higher level languages.
>
> I agree with them.  C is a pretty bad choice for managing qemu (or 
> even, C is a pretty bad choice).
>
> > (3) is the place where there are still potential challenges.  I think 
> > at the very least, our goal should be to enable conversion from (2) 
> > and (1) to be as easy as possible.  That's why I have proposed 
> > implementing a C library for the JSON transport because we could 
> > plumb that through the new libvirt API.  This would allow a user to 
> > very quickly port an application from QMP to libvirt.  In order to do 
> > this, we need the libvirt API to expose a dedicated monitor because 
> > we'll need to be able to manipulate events and negotiate features.
>
> Most likely any application that talks QMP will hide the protocol 
> behind a function call interface anyway.
>
> > Beyond simple porting, there's a secondary question of having 
> > non-libvirt apps co-exist with libvirt apps.  I think it's a good 
> > long term goal, but I don't think we should worry too much about it now.
>
> libvirt needs to either support all but the most esoteric use cases, 
> or to get out of the way completely.

That's not where it is today or the path I think they're taking.  I'm 
also not the person you have to convince of this.

Regards,

Anthony Liguori