Re: [Libvir] RFC: A more convenient 'virsh create' command

On Fri, Aug 25, 2006 at 11:55:22PM +0200, Karel Zak wrote: > On Fri, Aug 25, 2006 at 05:46:28PM +0100, Daniel P. Berrange wrote: > > The current implementation of 'virsh create' takes an XML file as its only > > parameter & creates a domain from this. This is great if you have a suitable > > XML file already, but if you are just trying to automate some simple tasks > > from the shell then the need to use XML is a little cumbersome. Thus I was > > thinking perhaps we could have an alternate way to define a new VM (keep > > the current XML based way too of course) > > > > QEMU for example makes it very easy to launch a new VM: > > > > qemu -m 256 -hda /path/to/image.dsk -hdc /path/to/boot.iso > > > > Taking inspiration from this syntax we could allow: > > > > virsh start -m 256 -hda /path/to/image.dsk -hdc /path/to/boot.iso -name Foo > > > > Internally, the 'start' command would simply transform these command > > line args into the neccessary libvirt XML and then call the normal > > create functions. > > > > Another way would be have a 'genxml' command, which accepted these list > > of devices / config properties & then printed out appropriate XMl. This > > could be piped to the regular 'virsh create' command > > > > virsh genxml -m 256 -hda /path/to/image.dsk -hdc /path/to/boot.iso \ > > -name Foo | virsh create - > > What use better command name instead "genxml"? For example "domgen". > (we have dominfo, domstate, ...). > > Same odd commad name is "dumpxml"... XML of what? It should be > renamed to "domdump". Well we can't break API - and there's a whole bunch of commands which don't start with 'dom' prefix - pause, shutdown, create, resume, vcpuinfo, setmem, setmaxmem, to name just a few - apart from nodeinfo & create essentially every command performs some kinda of operation on a domain. So I think needing to prefix all with 'dom' is a little overkill.

I agree that 'genxml' is a terrible name I suggest though - domgen is nicer - or as below - just allow the args to be passed to regular create command instead of an XML file path.

> I can imagine more commands like: > > virsh> bufread /etc/xen/Foo.xml > virsh> bufedit Foo -hdc /path/file.img > virsh> create --frombuf Foo > > I think it could be nice for playful admins and developers. Or is > over engineering? ;-) A little over-engineering - if we want to let people override contents of an XML file - i'd just combine both into one, eg virsh create -hda /path/file.img /etc/xen/Foo.xml