[vbox-dev] Writing extensions for VirtualBox and announcement of a general purpose VM controller project

[Achim Hasenmüller]

Rohit,

interesting project. I think your approach is the right one. What VMController does is (as the name suggests) control VirtualBox. Therefore the Python API is the right interface. It is part of VirtualBox' philosophy to introduce incompatible API changes in major versions. It is therefore to be expected, that you have to perform some adjustments in VMController in order to support VirtualBox 4.0. However, we do not allow such incompatible changes for maintenance updates and we also continue to support and update previous versions of the product.

For each release, the SDK documentation (http://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/SDKRef.pdf ) contains a complete list of incompatible API changes with information on how to adjust your code. Check out chapter 12 of the SDK reference.

The extension pack mechanism is indeed similar to the concept offered by Firefox and it's really meant to extend the functionality of VirtualBox. We intent do provide sample code on how to develop extension packs in the near future. However, I don't think it would be the right approach for you.

Achim


On Dec 29, 2010, at 03:06 , Rohit Yadav wrote:

> Hello VirtualBox hackers,
> 
> I'm a student developing an open source project called VMController [1], which is a general pupose Virtual Machine controller infrastructure, in collaboration with David Garcia Quintas and scientists at CERN. VMController will be used by BOINC-VM [2] and LHC++ at HOME [3], CERN. VMController, uses python bindings of VirtualBox to control the same.
> 
> I'm excited about the new VirtualBox 4.0 version. I'm curious about the extension packs. From some news sources, it sounds like addons to a web browser? If so, how may I start with development of one.
> VMController is broken with the new 4.0 version, if writing extension allows full exposure to VirtualBox interfaces (the same that were provided by the python/java bindings) and a clean deployment/packaging method, I would like to rewrite VMController as a VirtualBox extension/addon. Please let me know about the feasibility of such an extension.
> Kindly point me to any tutorial or manual about writing extensions, as I could n't find one from VirtualBox's website, and/or any other update.
> Thanks in advance.
> 

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