X-Git-Url: http://git.annexia.org/?p=libguestfs.git;a=blobdiff_plain;f=TODO;h=0aeceb7a4a82ab73edaa00f0a29eb6e65115a3ab;hp=c29ac3655921826c0d7f426c86aa7c07753aebe0;hb=2df2f2854ed2d1f9857ef3c5aaca29810cf3c506;hpb=0102b0cc9ba68155795eb0ab1ad3bb9f9f29368d

diff --git a/TODO b/TODO
index c29ac36..0aeceb7 100644
--- a/TODO
+++ b/TODO
@@ -1,32 +1,145 @@
+Ideas for the Python bindings:
+https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-virt/2009-April/msg00114.html
+
+----------------------------------------------------------------------
+
 We badly need to actually implement the FTP server mentioned in the
 documentation.
 
+Or: Implement a FUSE-based filesystem.  See the FUSE mountlo
+project which does something similar, albeit only to single
+filesystems:
+
+http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=121684&package_id=150116
+
+----------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+BufferIn and BufferOut should turn into <char *, int> and simple
+strings in other languages that can handle 8 bit clean strings.
+Limit on transfers would still be 2MB for these types.
+ - then implement write-file properly
+ - and implement read-file
+
+----------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+Implement febootstrap command.
+
+----------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+Complete the Haskell bindings (see discussion on haskell-cafe).
+
+----------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+Complete the bindings tests - must test the return values and
+error cases.
+
+----------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+For virt-inspector:
+
+ - Make a libvirt XML config
+
+ - Test over available OSes
+
+ - Add 'reged' / NT registry support.
+
 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
 
-Use a real scanner in guestfish.  Suggest:
+Use virtio_blk by default.  It's faster and more natural.
+Unfortunately it seems like this will rename all devices - see next
+item.
 
-    "..."	strings
-    '...'
-    [...]	matching [ and ]
+Note: virtio_blk *IS* supported by all our minimum platforms,
+ie. CentOS 5.3, Fedora 11, Debian.
 
 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
 
-(From Ján ONDREJ (SAL))
+"Device independent" naming for devices.
+
+With a Fedora-based appliance, using libata driver, devices have
+"SCSI" names like /dev/sda.
+
+With an EPEL-based appliance, using old ide driver, devices have names
+like /dev/hda.
+
+If we use virtio_blk, devices will have names like /dev/vda.
+
+What a mess.
+
+So the idea would be to add a device independent naming scheme, such
+as the one used by grub:
+
+  "(hdX)"   X = 0 means 'a', X = 1 means 'b' and so on.
+  "(hdX,Y)" Device X, partition Y (in grub, this counts from 0 which is
+            deeply confusing).
+
+There would have to be a very simple rule.  If guestfsd was expecting
+a /dev block device or partition name, then the alternate form can be
+used, and we would just look it up using the normal output of
+guestfs_list_devices.
+
+Maybe best is to use /dev/sda as the "standard" naming.  That
+shouldn't cause conflicts in the appliance because we tightly control
+what drivers are available.
+
+Note there's a lot of hackery that currently exists in tests.c which
+could be *removed* if we made this change.
+
+Open: Should the substitution be done in the library layer or in the
+daemon?
+
+----------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+Qemu options -- After discussion with the KVM developers, they have
+recommended some flags which will improve the safety and reliability
+of KVM.  Need to test that these also work under qemu (or at least, do
+no harm):
+
+-no-hpet      HPET support is broken and should be disabled.
+
+-rtc-td-hack  Keeps the rtc clock source track time correctly.
+
+-drive file=...,if=[ide|virtio],cache=off
+              cache=off is necessary to improve reliability in the
+	      event of a system crash when writing.
+
+----------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+"Standalone/local mode"
+
+Instead of running guestfsd (the daemon) inside qemu, there should be
+an option to just run guestfsd directly.
+
+The architecture in this mode would look like:
+
+     +------------------+
+     | main program     |
+     |------------------|
+     | libguestfs       |
+     +--------^---------+
+          |   | reply
+      cmd |   |
+     +----v-------------+
+     | guestfsd         |
+     +------------------+
 
-We should provide a way to stream partitions in and out.
+Notes:
 
-Thus:
+(1) This only makes sense if we are running as root.
 
-dd-out /dev/sda1 > [some file]
+(2) There is no console / kernel messages in this configuration, but
+we might consider capturing stderr from the daemon.
 
-dd-in /dev/sda1 < [some file]
+(3) guestfs_config and guestfs_add_drive become no-ops.
 
-Along with this, we need to be able to call the resize2fs program to
-resize the filesystem in case it is larger or smaller than the target
-partition.
+Obviously in this configuration, commands are run directly on the
+local machine's disks.  You could just run the commands themselves
+directly, but libguestfs provides a convenient API and language
+bindings.  Also deals with tricky stuff like parsing the output of the
+LVM commands.  Also we get to leverage other code such as
+virt-inspector.
 
-Another useful feature would be to allow rsync to/from a stream for
-whole filesystems and subdirectories.
+This is mainly useful from live CDs, ie. virt-p2v.
 
-The current protocol is message-oriented and doesn't support
-streaming.  But it's simple enough that we could add this.
+Should we bother having the daemon at all and just link the guestfsd
+code directly into libguestfs?