[Libguestfs] [PATCH REBASED] Remove main loop

[Richard W.M. Jones]

On Mon, Sep 14, 2009 at 01:18:40PM +0100, Matthew Booth wrote:
> On 14/09/09 12:51, Richard W.M. Jones wrote:
>> On Mon, Sep 14, 2009 at 12:44:15PM +0100, Matthew Booth wrote:
>>> On 14/09/09 12:10, Richard W.M. Jones wrote:
>>>> This is the only patch I currently have outstanding.  No changes from
>>>> the previous posting, except I rebased it against the head of git.
>>>
>>> I'm still reviewing this (and probably will be for a while). I have a
>>> high-level observation at this stage, though. Several error paths in
>>> this code (and the previous code, too) would be a whole lot simpler if
>>> LAUNCH and CANCEL were turned into real protocol messages, and receive
>>> file was terminated with ACK. This would also simplify review.
>>
>> We can't change the protocol because it's baked into other appliances
>> that we've shipped and people could use the wrong appliance and
>> library version combination.  (At the moment this does work).
>
> Well, the appliance is an integral part of libguestfs, which is also why  
> they're shipped together. The protocol really is an internal  
> implementation detail, not part of the API. I don't see any problem  
> changing the protocol.

In theory, but our advice for packagers (on non-Debian, non-Red Hat
distributions) has been to pull the Fedora binary appliance out of the
packages:

http://libguestfs.org/FAQ.html#distros

Also you can set LIBGUESTFS_PATH and point it to any appliance you
want, and most likely it will work.

Anyhow, changing the protocol itself (which is very well tested) is
outside the scope of this patch.

Rich.

-- 
Richard Jones, Emerging Technologies, Red Hat  http://et.redhat.com/~rjones
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