Re: [libvirt] [PATCH] virsh edit command
On Tue, Jul 29, 2008 at 05:09:37PM +0100, John Levon wrote:
Right. But to my mind you're fixing the symptom not the problem.
*Why*
do they need to edit the XML? I ask this of everybody who complains at
me about having to edit XML: 99% of the time it's wanting to change boot
flags, but it's also stuff like turning off ACPI, setting on_crash, etc.
Editing XML is absolutely not user friendly, and adding 'edit' just
papers over the real problems IMHO.
I actually started at one point on a graphical libvirt XML editor,
although I fairly quickly realised it would be a Sisyphean task
because the format isn't tremendously well defined[1] and it keeps
changing. Also because there's a lot of overlap between virt-install
and (potential) virt-config-editor.
I do genuinely think that having 'virsh edit' is better than the
current situation. Currently the advice that everyone gives is to do:
virsh dumpxml foo > foo.xml
vi foo.xml
virsh define foo.xml
which is of course precisely the same as what 'virsh edit' does :-)
Rich.
[1] Although it's a great deal better since Dan Berrange started
to formalize the way drivers generate and parse the XML.
--
Richard Jones, Emerging Technologies, Red Hat http://et.redhat.com/~rjones
virt-p2v converts physical machines to virtual machines. Boot with a
live CD or over the network (PXE) and turn machines into Xen guests.
http://et.redhat.com/~rjones/virt-p2v