Releases

This is the list of official releases for libvirt, along with an overview of the changes introduced by each of them.

For a more fine-grained view, use the git log.

v3.0.0 (unreleased)

• New features
  • New localPtr attribute for "ip" element in network XML
  • qemu: Support QEMU group I/O throttling
    Add the capability to allow group I/O throttling via a new domain <disk> <iotune> subelement "group_name" to allow sharing I/O throttling quota between multiple drives
  • nss: Introduce libvirt-guest
    New libvirt-guest nss module that translates libvirt guest names into IP addresses
  • daemon: Add support for runtime logging settings adjustment
    Logging-related settings like log outputs and filters can now be adjusted during runtime using the admin interface without the necessity of the daemon's restart
  • storage: Add virStorageVolInfoFlags API
    Add the API to support using the VIR_STORAGE_VOL_GET_PHYSICAL flag in order to return the host physical size in bytes of the image container in the allocation field of the _virStorageVolInfo structure. The --physical flag has been added to the virsh vol-info command to access the data
• Improvements
  • perf: Add more perf statistics
    Add support to get the count of branch instructions executed, branch misses, bus cycles, stalled frontend cpu cycles, stalled backend cpu cycles, and ref cpu cycles by applications running on the platform
  • conf: Display <physical> for volume xml
    Add a display of the <physical> size of a disk volume in the output of the volume XML
• Bug fixes
  • qemu: Correct GetBlockInfo values
    For an active domain, correct the physical value provided for a raw sparse file backed storage and the allocation value provided for a qcow2 file backed storage that hasn't yet been opened on the domain
  • qemu: Make virtio console usable on ppc64 guests
    The chardev detection code has been improved and can now handle this configuration properly

v2.5.0 (2016-12-04)

• New features
  • shmem: Add support for additional models
    The shmem device can now utilize QEMU's ivshmem-plain and ivshmem-doorbell, more modern versions of ivshmem
  • vbox: Add VirtualBox 5.1 support
  • libssh: New transport
    The new libssh transport allows one to connect to a running libvirtd via SSH, using the libssh library; for example: qemu+libssh://server/system
  • vhost-scsi: Add support scsi_host hostdev passthrough
    Add the capability to pass through a scsi_host HBA and the associated LUNs to the guest
  • qemu: Users can now enable debug logging for native gluster volumes in qemu using the "gluster_debug_level" option in qemu.conf
  • memory hotplug: Slot numbers for memory devices are now automatically allocated and thus persistent. In addition slot numbers can be specified without providing a base address, which simplifies user configuration
  • qemu: Express devices will be placed on PCIe bus by default
    For machine types that use a PCI Express root bus (e.g. x86_64/Q35 and aarch64/virt), any unaddressed PCI device that is an Express device (all virtio-1.0 devices, e1000e, nec-xhci, vfio assigned devices) will be placed on an Express controller (i.e. a pcie-root-port) instead of a legacy PCI controller (i.e. pci-bridge) with the root ports added as needed
• Improvements
  • docs: Better documentation for migration APIs and flags
  • vbox: Address thread safety issues
  • virsh: Add support for passing an alternative persistent XML to migrate command
  • vhostuser: Allow hotplug of multiqueue devices
  • NEWS: Switch to an improved format
    List user-visible changes instead of single commits for a better high-level overview of differences between libvirt releases
  • website: Modernize layout and branding
    The libvirt website looked very cluttered and outdated; it has now been completely overhauled, resulting in a design that's better organized and more pleasant to look at
• Bug fixes
  • vz: Fix migration in P2P mode
  • Forbid newline character in names of some libvirt objects
  • Fix compilation on macOS

Releases earlier than v2.5.0 detailed their changes using a different format and as such are excluded from the list above. You can read about those older release, starting from those made in 2016.