Re: [Qemu-devel] [qemu RFC v2] qapi: add "firmware.json"

[Laszlo Ersek <lersek@redhat.com>]

On 04/18/18 17:17, Eric Blake wrote:
> On 04/18/2018 07:40 AM, Laszlo Ersek wrote:
> 
>> Is it guaranteed that lists in JSON keep the order of the elements?
>> Because, dictionaries definitely don't promise any ordering between the
>> keys.
> 
> Yes, JSON lists preserve order (and we have to explicitly document cases
> where order within a list is not significant).
> 

Thanks.

After digesting the comments on @type for a while longer, from Dan, Gerd
and Paolo, I think we *should* keep @type, but rather than having it be
a simple enum, let's make it a list of enums, where order matters. Keep
@features separate, and document that order does not matter there.

Here's why: my brain is crashing trying to come up with a
human-parseable explanation why for *some* entries in @features, their
relative order is important, and why for some others, it isn't.
Discerning the subset for which order matters, from any specific
grab-bag of @features, will be no fun for the human user.

Given that the "ordered features" idea was brought to life solely
because a firmware can provide multiple interfaces (with a strong
preference order between them), I guess we might as well be honest about
that, and update @type accordingly.

Thoughts? :)

Thanks,
Laszlo