Re: [Qemu-devel] [PATCH 01/17] qidl: add QEMU IDL processor

[Anthony Liguori <aliguori@us.ibm.com>]

On 06/06/2012 04:37 PM, Avi Kivity wrote:
> On 06/06/2012 11:27 AM, Anthony Liguori wrote:
>> On 06/06/2012 03:45 PM, Avi Kivity wrote:
>>
>> I think you meant to add a const in there, but yeah, I know.
>
> Maybe also a _stupid.  How can one get a one line example wrong by
> omitting the important word out of five?

For the same reason so few people actually write 'Type * const' in C, it's an 
incredibly awkward syntax :-/

>>>   But I wasn't referring to that at all.
>>> Instead, some state is simply not relevant to the guest view, even
>>> though it is state.  We don't have a lot of that since most host state
>>> is behind nice interfaces, but think of a vga device that keeps track of
>>> the host window size and alt-ctrl status.  Those are not guest state and
>>> need not be migrated.
>>
>> Both the host window size and alt-ctrl status are not device state.
>> They are host backend state and they ought to be stored in a different
>> data structure. This is exactly how we do it (both things are stored in
>> sdl.c or vnc.c).
>>
>> If we're storing mutable host state in a device structure, that's a bug
>> IMHO. That's sort of the premise of the QIDL annotations at least.
>
> Ok.  But then the backend pointer is not 'const Backend * const', it's
> 'Backend * const' (if we don't allow retargeting).  So we can't say it's
> _immutable (and it isn't).  It's _host.

'Backend * const' is immutable

That is, the *pointer* is immutable.  What it points to is not.

If you want to '#define _host _immutable' as a way to improve readability, I'm 
not against that.  But from a conceptional perspective, we don't migrate it 
because nothing the guest does changes it.  It's immutable from the guests PoV.

>>>> In the case of a CharDriverState, the reference is always immutable.  If
>>>> we supported changing char backends dynamically, it would not happen by
>>>> changing the reference, but almost certainly by having the ability to
>>>> reopen the char driver in place.  IOW, while the referenced object
>>>> changes, the reference doesn't change.
>>>
>>> In either case, state changes.  The reason we don't send it over is
>>> because it's not guest state, not because we reopen in place or not (and
>>> migration shouldn't depend on how we choose to implement changing
>>> chardev backends -- reopen or delete/new).
>>
>> Well the goal is here not to support any possible way of separating
>> guest state and host state.   The goal is here is to be very opinionated
>> about how we separate guest and host state such that we can take a
>> rigorous approach to migrating guest state.
>>
>> I think we're actually pretty good today about separating host and guest
>> state.  I can't think of an example within devices where we don't
>> cleanly separate things outside of block devices.
>
> And I agree that if we find such an example we should unexample it
> quickly.  But you still have a pointer (or even object) in there that is
> not immutable.  Why not mark it clearly instead of saying "well, the
> important bits in it are immutable, we don't care about the rest"?

If your argument is, we can improve readability by further classifying immutable 
things into why their immutable, I'm with you :-)

Regards,

Anthony Liguori

>