Re: [Qemu-devel] [RFC PATCH 1/5] qdev: Create qdev_get_dev_path()

[Alex Williamson <alex.williamson@redhat.com>]

On Wed, 2010-06-16 at 00:01 +0100, Paul Brook wrote:
> > > I find this argument contradictory. The migration code already needs to
> > > check whether a device is compatible before it allows migration.  The
> > > driver name is not sufficient to ensure compatibility, so I see no
> > > benefit in including it in the device address.
> > 
> > See my comment above, I'm not seeing a sufficient argument about why
> > driver name matching is a false sense of security.  If on an incoming
> > migration I'm able to match the source provided e1000.03.0/vmstate
> > against the target registered e1000.03.0/vmstate and hand off to the
> > e1000 driver to check version ids, you bet I'm feeling a lot more secure
> > than if I'm handing off to whatever happened to register 03.0/vmstate on
> > the target.
> 
> I still say it should be the migration code that checks that both vmstate 
> structures are for the same type of device. i.e. if necessary the device name 
> should be embedded in the device state, not the device path.

The migration code would check that ("%s/%s", path, name) match.  So
embedding the driver name into path gives us a per path namespace.  Sure
the migration code could check ("%s/%s/%s, path, dev->info->name, name),
but should it be the migration code's responsibility to dig that out?
And if you think that i440FX-pcihost is a useful driver name, then we'd
have to figure out which driver names are useful.  I think it's more
consistent to simply put them all there.  Thanks,

Alex