cfbe9f1201
Add the main glib.h to internal.h so that all common code can use it.
Historically glib allowed applications to register an alternative
memory allocator, so mixing g_malloc/g_free with malloc/free was not
safe.
This was feature was dropped in 2.46.0 with:
commit 3be6ed60aa58095691bd697344765e715a327fc1
Author: Alexander Larsson <alexl@redhat.com>
Date: Sat Jun 27 18:38:42 2015 +0200
Deprecate and drop support for memory vtables
Applications are still encourged to match g_malloc/g_free, but it is no
longer a mandatory requirement for correctness, just stylistic. This is
explicitly clarified in
commit 1f24b36607bf708f037396014b2cdbc08d67b275
Author: Daniel P. Berrangé <berrange@redhat.com>
Date: Thu Sep 5 14:37:54 2019 +0100
gmem: clarify that g_malloc always uses the system allocator
Applications can still use custom allocators in general, but they must
do this by linking to a library that replaces the core malloc/free
implemenentation entirely, instead of via a glib specific call.
This means that libvirt does not need to be concerned about use of
g_malloc/g_free causing an ABI change in the public libary, and can
avoid memory copying when talking to external libraries.
This patch probes for glib, which provides the foundation layer with
a collection of data structures, helper APIs, and platform portability
logic.
Later patches will introduce linkage to gobject which provides the
object type system, built on glib, and gio which providing objects
for various interesting tasks, most notably including DBus client
and server support and portable sockets APIs, but much more too.
Signed-off-by: Daniel P. Berrangé <berrange@redhat.com>
Libvirt API for virtualization
Libvirt provides a portable, long term stable C API for managing the virtualization technologies provided by many operating systems. It includes support for QEMU, KVM, Xen, LXC, bhyve, Virtuozzo, VMware vCenter and ESX, VMware Desktop, Hyper-V, VirtualBox and the POWER Hypervisor.
For some of these hypervisors, it provides a stateful management daemon which runs on the virtualization host allowing access to the API both by non-privileged local users and remote users.
Layered packages provide bindings of the libvirt C API into other languages including Python, Perl, PHP, Go, Java, OCaml, as well as mappings into object systems such as GObject, CIM and SNMP.
Further information about the libvirt project can be found on the website:
License
The libvirt C API is distributed under the terms of GNU Lesser General
Public License, version 2.1 (or later). Some parts of the code that are
not part of the C library may have the more restrictive GNU General
Public License, version 2.0 (or later). See the files COPYING.LESSER
and COPYING for full license terms & conditions.
Installation
Libvirt uses the GNU Autotools build system, so in general can be built and installed with the usual commands. For example, to build in a manner that is suitable for installing as root, use:
$ ./configure --prefix=/usr --sysconfdir=/etc --localstatedir=/var
$ make
$ sudo make install
While to build & install as an unprivileged user
$ ./configure --prefix=$HOME/usr
$ make
$ make install
The libvirt code relies on a large number of 3rd party libraries. These will
be detected during execution of the configure script and a summary printed
which lists any missing (optional) dependencies.
Contributing
The libvirt project welcomes contributions in many ways. For most components the best way to contribute is to send patches to the primary development mailing list. Further guidance on this can be found on the website:
https://libvirt.org/contribute.html
Contact
The libvirt project has two primary mailing lists:
- libvirt-users@redhat.com (for user discussions)
- libvir-list@redhat.com (for development only)
Further details on contacting the project are available on the website: