libvirt-glib
============

libvirt is a C toolkit to interact with the virtualization capabilities
of recent versions of Linux (and other OSes). It is free software
available under the GNU Lesser General Public License. Virtualization on
the Linux Operating System means the ability to run multiple instances of
Operating Systems concurrently on a single hardware system where the basic
resources are driven by a Linux instance. The library aim at providing
long term stable C API initially for the Xen paravirtualization but
should be able to integrate other virtualization mechanisms if needed.

libvirt-glib wraps libvirt to provide a high-level object-oriented API better
suited for glib-based applications, via three libraries:

  - libvirt-glib - GLib main loop integration & misc helper APIs
  - libvirt-gconfig - GObjects for manipulating libvirt XML documents
  - libvirt-gobject - GObjects for managing libvirt objects

libvirt-glib is Free Software and licenced under LGPLv2+.

The latest official releases can be found at:

  ftp://libvirt.org/libvirt/glib/

NB: at this time, libvirt-glib is *NOT* considered API/ABI stable. Future
releases may still include API/ABI incompatible changes.

Dependencies / supported platforms
==================================

The libvirt-glib projects attempts to be moderately conservative
about updating the minimum required versions of external package
dependencies, to strike a balance between enabling use of new
features while minimizing inconvenience for downstream developers
on distro platforms with specific shipped versions.

There are roughly two classes of Linux distro - short lifetime
(Fedora, Ubuntu non-LTS, etc) and extended lifetime (RHEL, CentOS,
Debian, Ubuntu LTS). Based on this classification, the libvirt-glib
project will generally aim to ensure build support for

 - Most recent 2 releases of short lifetime distros
 - Most recent major release of extended lifetime distros,
   with most recent 2 minor updates

The project will consider RHEL, Fedora, Debian, Ubuntu LTS, Ubuntu,
OpenSUSE and SUSE (SLES/SLED) distros to be a representative subset
of distros when determining min required versions of external deps
that is reasonable to target. Other distros of similar release vintage
will typically have similar versions to at least one of these distros.
In the case of Debian, the project may at times choose to require use
of an update from the backports repository.

At any time, it may be possible to build on versions of distros
that are older than those implied by this policy, but the project
will not guarantee this remains the case in future releases. The
min required package versions of external dependencies may be
raised in future releases based on this distro build target policy.

The packages required to build libvirt-glib are

 - glib-2.0
 - gobject-2.0
 - libxml-2.0
 - libvirt

Functionality is optionally enhanced by the following packages:

 - gobject-introspection
 - Vala (build-time only)

Patches submissions
===================

Patch submissions are welcomed from any interested contributor. Please
send them to the main libvir-list mailing list

    libvir-list@redhat.com

Questions about usage / deployment can be send to the end users mailing
list

    libvirt-users@redhat.com

For further information about mailing lists & contacting the developers,
please consult

    http://libvirt.org/contact.html

--End
