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.
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Daniel P. Berrangé cfbe9f1201 build: link to glib library
Add the main glib.h to internal.h so that all common code can use it.

Historically glib allowed applications to register an alternative
memory allocator, so mixing g_malloc/g_free with malloc/free was not
safe.

This was feature was dropped in 2.46.0 with:

      commit 3be6ed60aa58095691bd697344765e715a327fc1
      Author: Alexander Larsson <alexl@redhat.com>
      Date:   Sat Jun 27 18:38:42 2015 +0200

        Deprecate and drop support for memory vtables

Applications are still encourged to match g_malloc/g_free, but it is no
longer a mandatory requirement for correctness, just stylistic. This is
explicitly clarified in

    commit 1f24b36607bf708f037396014b2cdbc08d67b275
    Author: Daniel P. Berrangé <berrange@redhat.com>
    Date:   Thu Sep 5 14:37:54 2019 +0100

        gmem: clarify that g_malloc always uses the system allocator

Applications can still use custom allocators in general, but they must
do this by linking to a library that replaces the core malloc/free
implemenentation entirely, instead of via a glib specific call.

This means that libvirt does not need to be concerned about use of
g_malloc/g_free causing an ABI change in the public libary, and can
avoid memory copying when talking to external libraries.

This patch probes for glib, which provides the foundation layer with
a collection of data structures, helper APIs, and platform portability
logic.

Later patches will introduce linkage to gobject which provides the
object type system, built on glib, and gio which providing objects
for various interesting tasks, most notably including DBus client
and server support and portable sockets APIs, but much more too.

Signed-off-by: Daniel P. Berrangé <berrange@redhat.com>
2019-10-14 10:54:42 +01:00
.ctags.d maint: Add support for .ctags.d 2019-05-31 17:54:28 +02:00
.gnulib@1f6fb368c0 maint: Improve use of configmake.h on mingw 2019-08-19 17:04:05 -05:00
build-aux build: merge all syntax-check logic into one file 2019-10-09 13:36:54 +01:00
ci ci: Stop using --workdir 2019-08-21 18:58:34 +02:00
docs build: link to glib library 2019-10-14 10:54:42 +01:00
examples nwfilter: move standard XML configs out of examples dir 2019-08-19 11:52:44 +01:00
gnulib maint: Fix VPATH build 2019-01-07 21:56:16 -06:00
include/libvirt api: introduce virConnectSetIdentity for passing uid, gid, selinux info 2019-09-16 11:25:01 +01:00
m4 build: probe for glib-2 library in configure 2019-10-14 10:54:42 +01:00
po build: drop the getopt-posix gnulib module 2019-10-07 11:34:24 +01:00
src build: link to glib library 2019-10-14 10:54:42 +01:00
tests build: link to glib library 2019-10-14 10:54:42 +01:00
tools build: link to glib library 2019-10-14 10:54:42 +01:00
.color_coded.in Add color_coded support 2017-05-09 09:51:11 +02:00
.ctags ctags: Generate tags for headers, i.e. function prototypes 2018-09-18 14:21:33 +02:00
.dir-locals.el
.editorconfig Add .editorconfig 2019-09-06 12:47:46 +02:00
.gitignore tests: delete objectlocking test code 2019-10-10 12:49:52 +01:00
.gitlab-ci.yml gitlab: Adapt to container name changes 2019-08-20 13:08:42 +02:00
.gitmodules gnulib: switch to use https:// instead of git:// protocol 2018-03-19 16:32:34 +00:00
.gitpublish git: add config file telling git-publish how to send patches 2018-04-23 11:36:09 +01:00
.mailmap mailmap: Remove some duplicates 2019-06-07 13:18:08 +02:00
.travis.yml build: probe for glib-2 library in configure 2019-10-14 10:54:42 +01:00
.ycm_extra_conf.py.in Add YouCompleteMe support 2017-05-09 09:51:11 +02:00
ABOUT-NLS po: provide custom make rules for po file management 2018-04-19 10:35:58 +01:00
AUTHORS.in AUTHORS: Add Katerina Koukiou 2018-07-17 17:01:19 +02:00
autogen.sh po: provide custom make rules for po file management 2018-04-19 10:35:58 +01:00
bootstrap maint: update gnulib for syntax-check on BSD 2019-01-07 13:54:07 -06:00
bootstrap.conf build: import gnulib's syntax-check make rules 2019-10-09 13:36:29 +01:00
ChangeLog maint: Stop generating ChangeLog from git 2019-04-03 09:45:25 +02:00
config-post.h nss: only link to yajl library and nothing else 2019-08-07 16:54:02 +01:00
configure.ac build: probe for glib-2 library in configure 2019-10-14 10:54:42 +01:00
COPYING
COPYING.LESSER maint: Remove control characters from LGPL license file 2015-09-25 09:16:24 +02:00
gitdm.config gitdm: Add gitdm configuration 2019-06-07 13:18:14 +02:00
GNUmakefile build: merge all syntax-check logic into one file 2019-10-09 13:36:54 +01:00
libvirt-admin.pc.in
libvirt-lxc.pc.in
libvirt-qemu.pc.in
libvirt.pc.in
libvirt.spec.in build: probe for glib-2 library in configure 2019-10-14 10:54:42 +01:00
Makefile.am build: merge all syntax-check logic into one file 2019-10-09 13:36:54 +01:00
Makefile.nonreentrant Remove backslash alignment attempts 2017-11-03 13:24:12 +01:00
mingw-libvirt.spec.in build: probe for glib-2 library in configure 2019-10-14 10:54:42 +01:00
README Provide a useful README file 2017-05-22 17:01:37 +01:00
README-hacking docs: update all GIT repo examples to use https:// protocol 2018-03-21 14:48:01 +00:00
README.md README: fix license typo 2019-07-25 09:21:28 -06:00
run.in util: activate directory override when used from library 2019-09-10 11:03:35 +01:00

Build Status CII Best Practices

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:

https://libvirt.org

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 2.0 (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:

Further details on contacting the project are available on the website:

https://libvirt.org/contact.html