[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. M4, PO, and tests would be split between the projects as appropriate. My proposal would be to do this incrementally, rather than all at once, moving the easier things out first. Thoughts? Rich. -- Richard Jones, Virtualization Group, Red Hat http://people.redhat.com/~rjones Read my programming and virtualization blog: http://rwmj.wordpress.com libguestfs lets you edit virtual machines. Supports shell scripting, bindings from many languages. http://libguestfs.org