[Kimchi-devel] Mechanism for guest edits

[Brent Baude]

Folks,

I'm about to send a patch to you guys that:

1) adds "serial" as a graphics type
2) allows you to edit the graphics type on a cold guest

In doing so and talking with Adam and Aline, it seems that a rework of
how the guest's xml is edited is in order.  When you edit a template,
for example, the whole templates xml is basically re-instantiated and
only the values that kimchi cares about is added.  The rest libvirt
fills in.

The editing of guest xmls differs from that mechanism.  Right now the
actual xml is edited and resubmitted.  If you think about editing
components of a guest (think about changing graphics types), you can see
where long-term there is an increased opportunity for the xml to become
complicated and maybe even incorrect.  XML creep if you will.

So, we are thinking that the cold guest edition should more closely
follow how the template works, where critical parts that kimchi has
fields for is inserted and libvirt does the rest of the work.  This will
also allow for future growth/change where new components are added.

I'll likely start a branch for it and get started on this.  In the
meanwhile, I'll submit my graphics patches for a start.

Brent