Re: [PATCH 0/8] kdevops: small NIXOS and gen_hosts fixes

On Wed, Apr 22, 2026, at 6:16 PM, Daniel Gomez wrote:
> Small cleanups picked up while building the new bringup backend that
> depends on this series. Each patch is independent and stands on its
> own: duplicated Makefile vars, ineffective silent recipe guards, libvirt
> XML and cleanup path drift on the NIXOS role, and gen_hosts rough edges
> around inventory group scoping and inventory owner refresh.
>
> Preparatory series for the upstreaming of nixos-qemu [1] and
> qemu-system-units [2] as git subtrees. The two projects provide an
> alternative to kdevops libvirtd, libguestfs, and virsh stack for local
> VM bringup, one that sidesteps the sudo and privilege escalation the
> Ansible host-setup playbooks currently need on the control node to drive
> that stack. libvirt bringup stays the default and is untouched; the
> alternative is opt-in via Kconfig. qemu-system-units renders the QEMU
> command line from templates into a systemd user service, so VMs run in
> the user session with no root daemon and no new wrapper on top of QEMU.
> nixos-qemu builds image-based and imageless guests declaratively through
> a NixOS flake, with no libguestfs in the loop.
>
> Link: https://github.com/linux-kdevops/nixos-qemu [1]
> Link: https://github.com/linux-kdevops/qemu-system-units [2]
> Signed-off-by: Daniel Gomez <[email protected]>
> ---
> Daniel Gomez (8):
>       nixos: remove duplicate nixos_channel extra-var from Makefile
>       nixos: do not emit comment-only recipe lines under $(Q)
>       nixos: drop hardcoded qxl video model from libvirt XML
>       nixos: destroy the libvirt domain before cleaning up local artefacts
>       gen_hosts: scope the python interpreter per inventory group
>       gen_hosts: make the linux workflow node name follow bootlinux_builder
>       defconfigs/nixos: name NIXOS hosts with the "nixos" prefix
>       gen_hosts: drop sudo become on inventory owner refresh

Not needing root privilege for local virtualization sounds great
to me!

The only hesitation is I would like to test the gen_hosts changes
in this series with the cloud providers, but I currently don't
have any kdevops branch that is newer than 6 months old. I will
need to update something and try it out.

-- 
Chuck Lever