p2v-building(1)

📦
version 1.42.4 · 7 versions
, in ubuntu stonking

💖 p2v-building(1) 💖

okay bestie, welcome to the Virtualization Support girlies club 🎀 this is p2v-building(1) and it's literally the glow-up guide for building virt-p2v from source. no cap.

✨ NAME ✨

p2v-building — the how-to on building virt-p2v from source 🛠️💅

🌸 DESCRIPTION 🌸

this whole manual page is just: how do i build virt-p2v from source. that's it. that's the vibe. 🦋

the main steps are giving very much checklist energy:

  • install the requirements 💖
  • build — either from the git repository or from a tarball 📦
  • run the tests 🧪
  • run the tools straight from the source directory, or install them 🏃‍♀️

👑 REQUIREMENTS 👑

🍓 Full list of requirements 🍓

  • qemu-img ≥ 2.2.0 — Required, periodt.
  • Gcc or Clang — Required, bestie. we use __attribute__((cleanup)), which is a GCC extension that Clang also supports 💜
  • Perl — Required. various build steps and tests are written in Perl. ngl tho, Perl is not needed at runtime. it's a build-time girly only 💅
  • Perl Pod::Man — Required. part of Perl core 🫶
  • Perl Pod::Simple — Required. also part of Perl core 🫶
  • autoconf — Required if you're compiling from git. Optional if you're compiling from a tarball ✨
  • automake — Required if you're compiling from git. Optional if you're compiling from a tarball ✨
  • Perl-compatible Regular Expressions (PCRE2) library — Required 🔥
  • libxml2 — Required 🌈
  • xz — Required ⭐
  • nbdkit — Optional. okay so virt-p2v(1) does require nbdkit, but it only needs to be present on the virt-p2v ISO — it does not need to be installed at compile time 😌
  • Glib ≥ 2.56 — Required 💖
  • Gtk ≥ 3.22 — Required 💖
  • D-Bus — Optional. here's the tea: if the D-Bus low level C API is available, virt-p2v can send a D-Bus message to logind to inhibit power saving (sleep, suspend, etc) during P2V conversions 🔋✨ and if this API is not available at build time, then very long conversions might get interrupted if the physical machine goes to sleep 😭 so like, keep that in mind.
  • valgrind — Optional. for testing memory problems 🧠
  • bash-completion — Optional. for tab-completion of commands in bash ⌨️

🛠️ BUILDING FROM GIT 🛠️

you will need to install additional dependencies autoconf and automake when building from git. not optional, bestie, sorry 😬

git clone https://github.com/libguestfs/virt-p2v
cd virt-p2v
autoreconf -i
./configure
make

slay. that's the whole thing 💅

📦 BUILDING FROM TARBALLS 📦

tarballs are downloaded from http://download.libguestfs.org/. 🌐

Stable tarballs are signed with the GnuPG key for rich@annexia.org, see https://pgp.mit.edu/pks/lookup?op=vindex&search=0x91738F73E1B768A0. and the fingerprint is F777 4FB1 AD07 4A7E 8C87 67EA 9173 8F73 E1B7 68A0 — verify it, queen 👑

download and unpack the tarball. then:

cd virt-p2v-1.xx.yy
./configure
make

🧪 RUNNING THE TESTS 🧪

DO NOT run the tests as root! 😱 Virt-p2v can be built and tested as non-root. running the tests as root could even be dangerous — don't do it. fr fr. 🙅‍♀️

to run the tests, do:

make check

there are many more tests you can run, if you're feeling extra. see p2v-hacking(1) for details 🌟

🚫 INSTALLING 🚫

DO NOT use make install! 💀 You'll end up with conflicting versions of virt-p2v installed, and this causes constant headaches for users. see the next section for how to use the ./run script instead 👀

distro packagers can use:

make DESTDIR=[temp-build-dir] install

(bestie, [temp-build-dir] is a placeholder — swap in your actual temp build dir 🫶)

🏃‍♀️ THE ./run SCRIPT 🏃‍♀️

you can test virt-p2v(1) and the other tools without needing to install them by using the ./run script in the top directory. this script works by setting several environment variables. iconic behaviour tbh ✨

for example:

./run virt-p2v-make-disk [usual virt-p2v-make-disk args ...]

the ./run script adds every virt-p2v binary to the $PATH, so the above example runs virt-p2v-make-disk from the build directory — not the globally installed virt-p2v-make-disk, if there even is one. main character energy, honestly 👑

⚙️ SELECTED ./configure SETTINGS ⚙️

there are many ./configure options, like so many. use:

./configure --help

to list them all. this section only covers some of the more important ones 💖

  • --enable-werror — this turns compiler warnings into errors (ie. -Werror). use this for development, especially when submitting patches. it should generally not be used for production or distro builds 🚨
  • --with-extra="distroname=version,..." — this option appends a text to the version of the virt-p2v tools. it's a free text field, but a good idea is to encode a comma-separated list of facts such as the distro name and version, and anything else that may help with debugging problems raised by users 🔍
  • --with-extra="local" — same option, different flavour! for custom and/or local builds, this can be set to local to indicate this is not a distro build 🏠

🌈 USING CLANG (LLVM) INSTEAD OF GCC 🌈

export CC=clang
./configure
make

boom. clang girlies rise 🦋

🎀 BUILDING i686 32 BIT VIRT-P2V 🎀

(This section only applies on the x86-64 architecture.) ⚠️

building a 32 bit virt-p2v (i686) binary improves compatibility with older hardware. 🖥️ see virt-p2v-make-disk(1) for details.

although virt-p2v is a simple Gtk application, it is not especially easy to build just virt-p2v as a 32 bit application on a 64 bit host 😭 usually the simplest way is to use a 32 bit chroot or even a 32 bit virtual machine to build virt-p2v. do what you gotta do 💅

on Fedora you can use the mock(1) tool. for example:

fedpkg mockbuild --root fedora-23-i386

this will result in a virt-v2v-*.i686.rpm file which can be unpacked to extract the 32 bit virt-p2v binary 📦✨

the binary may be compressed to either virt-p2v.i686.xz, or $libdir/virt-p2v/virt-p2v.i686.xz or $VIRT_P2V_DATA_DIR/virt-p2v.i686.xz as appropriate. this enables the virt-p2v-make-disk(1) --arch option 🔥

💜 SEE ALSO 💜

p2v-hacking(1), p2v-release-notes(1), http://libguestfs.org/. go read 'em bestie 📚

👑 AUTHORS 👑

Richard W.M. Jones (rjones at redhat dot com) — the icon himself 💖

Copyright (C) 2009-2019 Red Hat Inc.

📜 LICENSE 📜

this library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version. 🫶

this library is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. see the GNU Lesser General Public License for more details ⚠️

you should have received a copy of the GNU Lesser General Public License along with this program. if not, see <https://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.

🐛 BUGS 🐛

to get a list of bugs against libguestfs (which include virt-p2v), use this link: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/buglist.cgi?component=libguestfs&product=Virtualization+Tools

to report a new bug against libguestfs, use this link: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/enter_bug.cgi?component=libguestfs&product=Virtualization+Tools

when reporting a bug, please supply:

  1. the version of virt-p2v.
  2. where you got virt-p2v (eg. which Linux distro, compiled from source, etc)
  3. describe the bug accurately and give a way to reproduce it. 🔍✨

and that's the whole page, bestie!! 🎉 this was p2v-building(1) from virt-p2v-1.42.4, dated 2026-04-08 — go build something cute 💖🧚‍♀️🌸

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