+PLEASE LOOK AT THE TOP OF EACH FILE BEFORE EDITING TO SEE WHETHER IT
+IS AUTOMATICALLY GENERATED OR NOT.
+
Adding a new action
----------------------------------------------------------------------
All action functions are generated automatically, so there are only
two files you need to edit:
-(1) src/generator.ml: Add your new action, parameters, description,
-etc. to the big list called 'functions' at the top of this file.
+(1) generator/generator_actions.ml: Add your new action, parameters,
+description, etc. to the big list at the top of this file.
(2) Edit/create a C file in daemon/ subdirectory which implements your
'do_action' function. Take a look at one of the numerous examples
there.
-You will need to run src/generator.ml (from the top directory) which
-regenerates all the auto-generated files, and then continue with the
-ordinary build process.
-
Formatting
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Please make sure that the code compiles without warnings.
-Please test any changes
+Please test any changes.
+
+Useful targets:
+ make syntax-check Checks the syntax of the C code.
+ make check Runs the test suite.
+
+Enable warnings, and fix any you find:
+ ./configure --enable-gcc-warnings
+
+Code indentation
+----------------------------------------------------------------------
+Our C source code generally adheres to some basic code-formatting
+conventions. The existing code base is not totally consistent on this
+front, but we do prefer that contributed code be formatted similarly.
+In short, use spaces-not-TABs for indentation, use 2 spaces for each
+indentation level, and other than that, follow the K&R style.
+
+If you use Emacs, add the following to one of one of your start-up files
+(e.g., ~/.emacs), to help ensure that you get indentation right:
+
+ ;;; In libguestfs, indent with spaces everywhere (not TABs).
+ ;;; Exceptions: Makefile and ChangeLog modes.
+ (add-hook 'find-file-hook
+ '(lambda () (if (and buffer-file-name
+ (string-match "/libguestfs\\>" (buffer-file-name))
+ (not (string-equal mode-name "Change Log"))
+ (not (string-equal mode-name "Makefile")))
+ (setq indent-tabs-mode nil))))
+
+ ;;; When editing C sources in libguestfs, use this style.
+ (defun libguestfs-c-mode ()
+ "C mode with adjusted defaults for use with libguestfs."
+ (interactive)
+ (c-set-style "K&R")
+ (setq c-indent-level 2)
+ (setq c-basic-offset 2))
+ (add-hook 'c-mode-hook
+ '(lambda () (if (string-match "/libguestfs\\>" (buffer-file-name))
+ (libguestfs-c-mode))))
+
+Directories
+----------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+appliance/
+ The qemu appliance, build scripts and so on.
+
+capitests/
+ Automated tests of the C API. See "Tests" below.
+
+cat/
+ The 'virt-cat', 'virt-filesystems' and 'virt-ls' commands and
+ documentation.
+
+contrib/
+ Outside contributions, experimental parts.
+
+csharp/
+ Experimental C# bindings.
+
+daemon/
+ The daemon that runs inside the guest and carries out actions.
+
+df/
+ 'virt-df' command and documentation.
+
+examples/
+ The examples.
+
+fish/
+ Guestfish (the command-line program / shell)
+
+fuse/
+ FUSE (userspace filesystem) built on top of libguestfs.
+
+generator/
+ The crucially important generator, used to automatically
+ generate large amounts of boilerplate C code for things like
+ RPC and bindings.
+
+haskell/
+ Haskell bindings.
+
+hivex/ [removed in 1.0.85]
+ This used to contain the hivex library for reading and
+ writing Windows Registry binary hive files. This is now
+ available as a separate upstream project.
+
+images/
+ Some guest images to test against. These are gzipped to save
+ space. You have to unzip them before use.
+
+ Also contains some files used by the test suite.
+
+inspector/
+ Virtual machine image inspector (virt-inspector).
+
+java/
+ Java bindings.
+
+m4/
+ M4 macros used by autoconf.
+
+ocaml/
+ OCaml bindings.
+
+php/
+ PHP bindings.
+
+po/
+ Translations of simple gettext strings. For translations of
+ longer documents, see po-docs/.
+
+po-docs/
+ The build infrastructure and PO files for translations of
+ manpages and POD files. Eventually this will be combined
+ with the po/ directory, but that is rather complicated.
+
+perl/
+ Perl bindings.
+
+python/
+ Python bindings.
+
+regressions/
+ Regression tests.
+
+rescue/
+ 'virt-rescue' command and documentation.
+
+ruby/
+ Ruby bindings.
+
+tools/
+ Command line tools written in Perl (virt-resize and more).
+
+src/
+ Source code to the C library.
+
+test-tool/
+ Interactive qemu/kernel test tool.
+
+Tests
+----------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+You can supply zero or as many tests as you want per API call.
+
+The test environment has 4 block devices:
+ /dev/sda 500MB General block device for testing.
+ /dev/sdb 50MB /dev/sdb1 is an ext2 filesystem used for testing
+ filesystem write operations.
+ /dev/sdc 10MB Used in a few tests where 2 block devices are needed.
+ /dev/sdd - ISO with fixed content (see images/test.iso).
+
+To be able to run the tests in a reasonable amount of time, the
+virtual machine and block devices are reused between tests. So don't
+try testing kill_subprocess :-x Between each test we blockdev-setrw,
+umount-all, lvm-remove-all.
+
+Each test starts with an initial scenario, selected using one of the
+'Init*' expressions, described in generator/generator_types.ml. These
+initialize the disks in a particular way as described. You should not
+assume anything about the previous contents of other disks that are
+not initialized.
+
+You can add a prerequisite clause to any individual test. This is a
+run-time check, which, if it fails, causes the test to be skipped.
+Useful if testing a command which might not work on all variations of
+libguestfs builds. A test that has prerequisite of 'Always' is run
+unconditionally.
+
+In addition, packagers can skip individual tests by setting the
+environment variables: eg:
+
+ SKIP_TEST_<CMD>_<NUM>=1 SKIP_TEST_COMMAND_3=1 (skips test #3 of command)
+ SKIP_TEST_<CMD>=1 SKIP_TEST_ZEROFREE=1 (skips all zerofree tests)
+
+and packagers can run only certain tests by setting eg:
+
+ TEST_ONLY="vfs_type zerofree"
+
+See capitests/tests.c for more details of how these environment
+variables work.
Debugging
----------------------------------------------------------------------
-Use 'guestfish -v', which will show error messages etc from the
-daemon.
+It's a good idea to use guestfish to try out new commands.
+
+Debugging the daemon is a problem because it runs inside a minimal
+qemu environment. However you can print messages from the daemon, and
+they will show up if you use 'guestfish -v'.
Patches
----------------------------------------------------------------------
-Submit patches to the fedora-virt mailing list:
-http://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-virt
+Submit patches to the mailing list:
+http://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/libguestfs
and CC to rjones@redhat.com
+
+I18N
+----------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+We support i18n (gettext anyhow) in the library.
+
+However many messages come from the daemon, and we don't translate
+those at the moment. One reason is that the appliance generally has
+all locale files removed from it, because they take up a lot of space.
+So we'd have to readd some of those, as well as copying our PO files
+into the appliance.
+
+Debugging messages are never translated, since they are intended for
+the programmers.
+
+Extended printf
+----------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+In the daemon code we have created custom printf formatters %Q and %R,
+which are used to do shell quoting.
+
+%Q => Simple shell quoted string. Any spaces or other shell characters
+ are escaped for you.
+
+%R => Same as %Q except the string is treated as a path which is prefixed
+ by the sysroot.
+
+eg.
+
+asprintf (&cmd, "cat %R", path);
+==> "cat /sysroot/some\ path\ with\ spaces"
+
+Note: Do NOT use these when you are passing parameters to the
+command{,r,v,rv}() functions. These parameters do NOT need to be
+quoted because they are not passed via the shell (instead, straight to
+exec). You probably want to use the sysroot_path() function however.