[Libguestfs] Plan for nbdkit 1.8

I would really like to release a new stable nbdkit (1.8) soon. The reasons are not only because of the many great new features (which I summarise below) but also a few practical reasons: - Dropping mandatory [key=].. (ie. "magic config key") for many plugin parameters makes nbdkit much easier to use and easier to describe to potential users. - Demonstrated utility of log filter and error filter for testing and visualizing block devices. (https://rwmj.wordpress.com/2018/11/06/nbd-graphical-viewer-raid-5-edition/) - Lots of attention to limits / large virtual sizes (eg https://rwmj.wordpress.com/2018/09/05/nbdkit-for-loopback-pt-5-8-exabyte-...) I hope to give a FOSDEM talk next year and it would be nice to have a stable set of features available in most distros. If we release 1.8 soon then it could become the baseline next February. ---- The release notes would look something like this [preliminary!]: - Magic config key allows simpler invocation of many plugins, eg: nbdkit file file=foo becomes: nbdkit file foo - New plugin: 'sh' for running shell scripts and other external programs. (https://rwmj.wordpress.com/2018/09/09/write-nbdkit-plugins-in-shell-script/) - New plugin: 'partitioning' which creates a partitioned disk from a list of partitions in files. - New plugin: 'iso' which creates an ISO (CD-ROM) image on the fly from a directory of files. (https://rwmj.wordpress.com/2018/10/18/new-in-nbdkit-create-an-iso-image-o...) - New plugin: 'floppy' which creates a virtual FAT-formatted floppy disk from a directory of files. (https://rwmj.wordpress.com/2018/10/29/new-in-nbdkit-create-a-virtual-flop...) - data: Add disk2data.pl script to generate data parameters. - data: Use <file to inline a file. - vddk: Use '-D vddk.diskinfo=1' to enable extra debug information. - tests: Use a helper function to refactor and simplify most tests. - partition filter: Can handle > 128 GPT partitions. - nbdkit can be compiled on the Haiku operating system (François Revol). ---- Anyhow, if there's something you'd like to get into nbdkit 1.8 and/or you strongly object to any of the above, please follow up. Rich. -- Richard Jones, Virtualization Group, Red Hat http://people.redhat.com/~rjones Read my programming and virtualization blog: http://rwmj.wordpress.com Fedora Windows cross-compiler. Compile Windows programs, test, and build Windows installers. Over 100 libraries supported. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/MinGW