Re: [PATCH] libxl/json: don't expose internal functions

[Anthony PERARD <anthony@xenproject.org>]

On Tue, Nov 25, 2025 at 10:11:21AM +0100, Jan Beulich wrote:
> Ideally internal function declarations wouldn't live in a non-private
> header. If already they need to, they should be hidden as much as
> possible. That is (a) their declarations shouldn't be exposed and (b) the
> symbols shouldn't appear in the shared library's dynamic symbol table.
> Gate the declarations upon _hidden actually being defined (rather than
> providing an empty fallback), and apply _hidden also to the libyail
> variants.

The YAJL functions needs to stay in the API, they've been exposed on
purpose in this header... The only user of those I know is `xl`. They
are limited since your application also needs to use libyajl. I think
I've butchered this header enough to make it complicated to use for
applications that are not `xl`.

libxl_json.h is only part of the header, there's a second part that is
automatically generated, _libxl_types_json.h.

While we could simply move the few prototype that uses json-c support
listed here to an actually private header, there's still the
autogenerated header to deal with. I feel like it would simpler to avoid
installing both headers (libxl_json.h and _libxl_types_json.h) when we
compile the tools with json-c. And even maybe add a fake "libxl_json.h"
which only have an "#error" saying the json helper aren't available
anymore.

Thanks,

-- 
Anthony PERARD