Not RFS: libguestfs (ITP #530427)
http://www.annexia.org/tmp/debian/
I've also uploaded libguestfs to the URL above. Now this is a much
more tricky package than febootstrap.
libguestfs home page:
http://et.redhat.com/~rjones/libguestfs/
It's a C library, but the source contains bindings to many different
programming languages: OCaml, Python, Perl, Java, Haskell and Ruby.
So to package it would require coordination with all of those Debian
packaging groups. For the moment, I've disabled the language
bindings, so this package just builds the C library and the shell
tool.
Surprisingly though, that is _not_ the tricky bit ... This is the
tricky bit:
This package also uses febootstrap to build a Fedora appliance[0],
which is then embedded in the resulting binary[1]. The Fedora
appliance is of course built out of Fedora RPMs, and in the default
configuration these get downloaded from a Fedora yum repository[2].
When we build this package in Fedora, we get the RPMs 'for free' as it
were from the existing buildroot.
We looked at other approaches to porting to Debian, including changing
the scripts to use debootstrap[3]. The way we did it represented the
simplest approach to just getting it working on Debian. I think if we
wanted to add debootstrap support, we'd need someone interested on the
Debian side to maintain that.
So there we go - did I say it was a tricky package? Your comments
welcomed.
Rich.
[0] For the definition of 'appliance' see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_appliance
[1] In case you are wondering, this page explains the architecture:
http://et.redhat.com/~rjones/libguestfs/guestfs.3.html#state_machine_and_low_level_event_api
[2] Fedora has policies which are as strong as Debian, so these do
represent Free software, at least as compliant as the DFSG, although
I'm sure there are corner cases such as differences in policy on
inclusion/exclusion of kernel firmware.
[3] Febootstrap and debootstrap are architecturally fairly similar to
each other.
--
Richard Jones, Emerging Technologies, Red Hat http://et.redhat.com/~rjones
virt-df lists disk usage of guests without needing to install any
software inside the virtual machine. Supports Linux and Windows.
http://et.redhat.com/~rjones/virt-df/
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