Generally virt-* tools can be run straight from git. For example for virt-manager:

git clone https://github.com/virt-manager/virt-manager
cd virt-manager
./virt-manager --debug

The other tools like virt-install should work similarly. This expects you already have a distro provided version of virt-manager installed which pulled in all the necessary dependencies. If not, see INSTALL.md for more hints about finding the correct dependencies.

Bug reports should go to our github issue tracker.

The bug tracker is for issues affecting the latest code only. If you are using a distro provided package like from Ubuntu or Fedora, please file a bug in their bug tracker.

If you suspect the bug also affects upstream code, please confirm it by running the latest code using the steps above.

The following commands will be useful for anyone writing patches:

meson test -C build

Any patches shouldn't change the output of 'pytest' or 'pylint'. Depending on what version of libvirt or pylint is installed, you may see some pre-existing errors from these commands. The important thing is that any changes you make do not add additional errors.

The 'test' command requires pylint, pycodestyle and 'pytest' to be installed. If codespell is installed, it will be invoked as well.

Patches to virtinst/ code should ideally not regress code coverage testing. Run pytest --cov to see a coverage report before and after your contribution, and ensure no new lines show up. Maintainers can help you out if you aren't sure how to test your code.

One useful way to manually test virt-manager's UI is using libvirt's unit test driver. From the source directory, Launch virt-manager like:

./virt-manager --connect test://$PWD/tests/testdriver.xml

This testdriver has many fake XML definitions that can be used to see each bit of virt-manager's UI. It also enables testing the various wizards without having to alter your host virt config.

The command line tools can be tested similarly. To run a virt-install command that won't alter your host config, you can do:

./virt-install --connect test:///default --debug ...

--connect test:///default here is libvirt's built in unit test driver.

We use glade-3 for building most of virt-manager's UI. See the files in the ui/ directory.

The virt-manager git repo is hosted on github. All patches should be submitted there.

If you are planning to add a feature to virt-manager's UI, please read DESIGN.md first. Features that do not fit the goals specified in that document may be rejected. If you are unsure if your feature is a good fit for virt-manager, please ask on the mailing list before you start coding!

Extending the virt-install or virt-xml command line is a good introductory task for virt-manager. See the wiki for both a patch tutorial, and a list of libvirt <domain> XML options that still need to be added to our command line.

Translations are handled through the Weblate instance hosted by the Fedora Project.

• https://translate.fedoraproject.org/projects/virt-manager/virt-manager/
• More info about translating as part of Fedora: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/L10N/Translate_on_Weblate
• The up to date translation .pot template is stored in the main branch
• Translations are submitted by Weblate as pull requests, usually merged to the main branch before release and whenever needed (e.g. before updating the .pot template)

There's a few standalone specialty tests:

pytest --uitests                # dogtail UI test suite. This takes over your desktop
pytest tests/test_urls.py       # Test fetching media from live distro URLs
pytest tests/test_inject.py     # Test live virt-install --initrd-inject

To see full debug output from test runs, use pytest --capture=no --log-level=debug ...