[virt-tools-list] Re: libosinfo - another try

[Daniel P. Berrange]

On Thu, Oct 22, 2009 at 11:47:25AM -0400, Cole Robinson wrote:
> On 10/22/2009 05:47 AM, Arjun Roy wrote:
> > 
> > So one could have the following:
> > <distro ID=1>
> >   <name>Fedora 10</name>
> > </distro>
> > 
> > <distro ID=2>
> >   <name>Fedora 11</name>
> >   <upgrades ID=1 />
> > </distro>
> > 
> 
> If we are going to use 'ID' here as the unique identifier, I think it
> should have some human readable value. Just using numbers will quickly
> become confusing if manually navigating the XML.
> 
> In the previous discussion, someone mentioned just using <name> as the
> unique identifier, however I don't think that is sufficient either,
> since it is not very machine friendly. Something like
> 
> "Fedora 12" -> "fedora12"
> "Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.4" -> "rhel5.4" or
>                                   "red_hat_enterprise_linux_5.4"
> 
> Think of using this value from the command line (like virt-install
> --os-variant), no one is going to want to have to use spaces and proper
> capitalization, or a plain digit.

I think we've really got 3 identifiers here

 - Globally unique ID for the distro - the RDF URI idea I suggested in
   another reply
 - Friendly unique name for the distro - the vendor's own official name
   for the distro
 - Short unique alias  - something convenient that can be used in virt-install
   or similar CLI tools as an alternative to unique ID or NAMe.

eg

  <distro rdf:about="http://fedoraproject.org/fedora-11">
    <name>Fedora 10</name>
    <alias>fedora-10</alias>
  </distro>


Daniel
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