Menu
VirtualBox is a program for creating a virtual machine. Once you set up VirtualBox on your computer, you can use it to run a completely different operating system -- for example, running Windows on a Mac or Apple on a Linux computer. With VirtualBox, you can run more than one OS simultaneously, or work on an outmoded OS such as DOS that isn't supported by current hardware.
SDK
When you download VirtualBox, you also download a Software Developers Kit (SDK) for writing code that interacts with the virtual machine. SDK contains platform-independent text files and documentation that work regardless of which platform you run your VirtualBox on. If you need a platform-specific package, you will have to order that separately. SDK works with VirtualBox's Application Programming Interface (API), which enables you to configure, start and stop VirtualBox and retrieve performance statistics about how well it runs the software you develop.
Mar 01, 2018 I hope you have enough information now and let’s go ahead and install VirtualBox. Install VirtualBox. Click on the downloaded exe file to start the installation. It is wizard-driven install, you just need to click on Next to continue and Cancel to exit setup wizard. Below are the complete step-by-step instructions for VirtualBox Installation with screenshots.
Installation
The first step to setting up SDK is to install the virtual machine components -- they're open-source and free to download -- and start up VirtualBox. To start the program on Windows, go into the Programs menu and click on 'Start' in the VirtualBox menu item. On a Mac, open the Applications folder and double-click on 'VirtualBox.' On Linux, you find VirtualBox in either the System or System Tools group of the Applications menu.
API
There are two ways to set up the SDK to interact with the API. VirtualBox ships with a Component Object Model (COM), a mechanism that will enable you to use the API if you're proficient in a language such as Java, Visual Basic or C++ that works with COM. The alternative is to order the VirtualBox Web service that maps the entire API. You can use the service with any programming language that incorporates Web Service Definition Language, such as Java, C++, Python, PHP and Perl.
SDK Setup
The exact steps for setting up the SDK will depend on whether you're working through the COM or the Web service approach, and which language you're working with. If you want to use the Web service with Python, for example, you will have to install Python's ZSI SOAP implementation on your machine before you can run any of the sample developer code in the SDK. If you use Python with the COM, on the other hand, it runs better without SOAP. Oracle provides details on different installation options.
Video of the Day
Brought to you by Techwalla
More Articles
Oracle provides this SDK to interface with VirtualBox. In the main branch,everything is exactly as it would be if you were to download the kit directlyfrom Oracle (https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads), except for the README,LICENSE, Makefile, and setup.py files.
In this branch, only the original (Python 2) libraries remain. This is to makecheckouts smaller that only need those few files. Nothing else about the fileshas changed from the version made available by Oracle.
The code is available on Github and PyPI.
Installation
Since the package is listed on PyPI, you can install it with:
Please note that this package conflicts with the
vboxapi
package.Usage
I won't attempt to document the full API since I'm not the maintainer of theactual code. However, if, like me, all you're trying to do is manage the VMsin VirtualBox, you'll want to check out the
vboxapi.VirtualBoxManager
classin particular. From the SDK Reference manual, here's an example of how to usethe manager to perform some basic tasks:License
Although I've listed this repository as being licensed under 'The Unlicense',I am not the originator of the code. The license information in SDKRef.pdf(in the docs folder) contains this explanation of the code's license:
The sample code files shipped with the SDK are generally licensedliberally to make it easy for anyone to use this code for their ownapplication code.
The Java files under bindings/webservice/java/jax-ws/ (library files forthe object-oriented web service) are, by contrast, licensed under the GNULesser General Public License (LGPL) V2.1.
See sdk/bindings/webservice/java/jax-ws/src/COPYING.LIB for the full textof the LGPL 2.1.
When in doubt, please refer to the individual source code files shippedwith this SDK.
My hope is that by storing the SDK here, it will be of use to those who want toinstall the library from pip as well as those working with Git repositoriesexclusively, but I cannot take responsibility for the code as provided byOracle.