Re: [Qemu-devel] [PATCH 01/11] QMP: Introduce specification file

[Avi Kivity <avi@redhat.com>]

On 06/29/2009 11:23 PM, Anthony Liguori wrote:
> Avi Kivity wrote:
>>> I don't mind if this ends up looking like JSON, but I don't want to 
>>> have to enforce that it's remains JSON compatible in the long term.  
>>> We should have our own grammar that we can version and that people 
>>> can use as the basis of a client.
>>
>> That really reduces the attractiveness of the whole thing.  Writing 
>> parsers and emitters should be an optional part of writing a qemu 
>> control program, not a required part.
> I really disagree

Writing parsers and emitters should be a required part of writing a qemu 
control program?

>
> Whatever we do for QMP, it will not be enabled for 0.11 so we have 6 
> months to get it right.  In the interest of moving forward and writing 
> patches instead of emails, here's what I'm thinking:
>
> 1) Update the QMP patches to support return values for monitor commands
> 2) Update patches to support structured command output
> 3) Update the patches to support higher level data types (like lists 
> and dictionaries)
> 4) For whatever the emission format is, provide a regular grammar to 
> parse that output
>
> I will commit a patch series that meets these goals.

We have six months so you'll commit some unreviewed patches now?

This is deeply dissatisfying.

> Given a regular grammar, it's extremely easy to convert to outputting 
> JSON, XML, or whatever.  We can keep arguing about whether JSON is the 
> right format long term.  However, I don't want the useful work of 
> conversing monitor commands to satisify 1-3 to be held up by arguments 
> about the emission format which is largely unrelated to the command 
> conversions.

We can certainly get consensus on some things earlier.  I don't see the 
need to commit without review though.

-- 
I have a truly marvellous patch that fixes the bug which this
signature is too narrow to contain.