Re: [Libguestfs] 1.39 proposal: Let's split up the libguestfs git repo and tarballs

My contention is that the libguestfs git repository is too large and unwieldy. There are too many separate, unrelated projects and as a result of that the source has too many dependencies and takes too long to build and test. The project divides (sort of) naturally into layers -- the library, the bindings, the various virt tools -- and could be split along those lines into separate projects which can then be released and evolve at their own pace. My suggested split would be something like this: * libguestfs: The library, daemon and appliance. That would include the following directories in a single project: appliance bash contrib daemon docs examples gnulib lib logo test-tool tmp utils website * 1 project for each language binding: csharp erlang gobject golang haskell java lua ocaml php perl python ruby

* virt-customize and related tools, we'd probably call this subproject "virt-builder". It would include virt-builder, virt-customize and virt-sysprep, since they share a lot of common code.

* 1 project for each of the following items: small tools written in C (virt-cat, virt-filesystems, virt-log, virt-ls, virt-tail, virt-diff, virt-edit, virt-format, guestmount, virt-inspector, virt-make-fs, virt-rescue) guestfish virt-alignment-scan and virt-df virt-dib virt-get-kernel virt-resize virt-sparsify virt-v2v and virt-p2v virt-win-reg

* I'd be inclined to drop the legacy Perl tools virt-tar, virt-list-filesystems, virt-list-partitions unless someone especially wished to step forward to maintain them. * common code and generator: Off to the side we'd somehow need to package up the common code and the generator for use by all of the above projects. It wouldn't be a separate project for downstream packagers, but instead the code would be included (ie. duplicated) in tarballs and upstream available as a side git repo that you'd need to include when building (git submodule?). This is somewhat unspecified.