Re: [Qemu-devel] [PATCH v2 2/2] qapi: Allow setting default values for optional parameters

[Eric Blake <eblake@redhat.com>]

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On 05/05/2014 07:30 PM, Fam Zheng wrote:

>>     NAME: { 'type': TYPE, 'default': DEFAULT }
>>
>> where
>>
>>     NAME: { 'type': TYPE }
>>
>> can be abbreviated to
>>
>>     NAME: TYPE

> 
> In data definition, we allow inline sub-structure:
> 
> { 'type': 'VersionInfo',
>   'data': {'qemu': {'major': 'int', 'minor': 'int', 'micro': 'int'},
>            'package': 'str'} }
> 
> If we allow properties as a dict, we need to disambiguate properly from the
> above case. Proposing:
> 
>     MAGIC: { 'name': NAME, 'type: TYPE, 'default': DEFAULT }

Oh, good catch.  The alternative is to drop all instances of inline
sub-structs.  Searching for 'data.*{.*{', I found only VersionInfo and
PciBridgeInfo; I then did a full manual search of qapi-schema.json and
only found the additional instance of PciDeviceInfo where the sub-struct
is not on the same line as the initial { of the 'data'.  Just getting
rid of inlined sub-structs may be quite feasible.

On a related vein, there are a number of types that aren't merely a
string name.  For example:

{ 'command': 'migrate-set-capabilities',
  'data': { 'capabilities': ['MigrationCapabilityStatus'] } }

and similar, where we have an array type rather than a raw string type
name.  But at least with that, NAME: { 'type': [ 'array' ] } is still a
reasonable parse.

The problem with MAGIC:{'name'...} is that you need to express more than
one parameter, but as a dict, you can't reuse the same MAGIC more than
once.  That is:

'data': { MAGIC : { 'name': 'qemu', 'type': { 'major'...} },
          MAGIC : { 'name': 'package', 'type', 'str' } } }

proves that you have to have two distinct MAGIC in the same 'data', so
'' for both is out.

> 
> Where MAGIC should NOT be something that is a valid NAME from current schema.
> Some ideas:
> 
>  - Special string, that has invalid chars as a identifier, like '*', '%', '&',
>    etc, or simply an empty str ''.
>    Of course we need to enforce the checking and distinguishing in
>    scripts/qapi-types.py.
> 
>  - Non-string: current NAME must be a string, any type non-string could be
>    distinguished from NAME, like number, bool, null, []. But its meaning could
>    be confusing to reviewer.
> 
>  - Special symbol: we can define a dedicate symbol for this, like the literal
>    TYPE, in the schema. But this way we deviate more from JSON.

Also, while we aren't strict JSON, it's nice that we're still fairly
close to JSON5, and worth keeping that property.

> 
> Personally, I think empty str '' makes more sense for me. What do you think?
> 

At this point, I'm leaning towards dropping support for unnamed inlined
sub-structs.

> Anyway we only add things, so we will keep the '*name' suger.
> 
> Thanks,
> Fam
> 
> 

-- 
Eric Blake   eblake redhat com    +1-919-301-3266
Libvirt virtualization library http://libvirt.org


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