Re: [Qemu-devel] [PATCH v3 1/7] qapi: use qemu_strtoi64() in parse_str

[Eric Blake <eblake@redhat.com>]

On 11/5/18 9:53 AM, David Hildenbrand wrote:

>> When I first looked at the ranges stuff in the string input visitor, I
>> felt the urge to clean it up, then sat on my hands until it passed.
>>
>> The rest is reasonable once you understand how it works.  The learning
>> curve is less than pleasant, though.
>>
> 
> Maybe I'll pick this up again when I have more time to invest.
> 
> The general concept
> 
> 1. of having an input visitor that is able to parse different types
> (expected by e.g. a property) sounds sane to me.
> 
> 2. of having a list of *something*, assuming it is int64_t, and assuming
> it is to be parsed into a list of ranges sounds completely broken to me.
> 
> I was not even able to find an example QEMU comand line for 2. Is this
> maybe some very old code that nobody actually uses anymore? (who uses
> list of ranges?)

I believe that the -numa node,cpus=first-last code is an example use of 
a list of ranges.  At any rate, tests/test-string-input-visitor.c has 
test_visitor_in_intList() to ensure we don't break back-compat with the 
existing clients that use ranges, as awkward as they may be.

-- 
Eric Blake, Principal Software Engineer
Red Hat, Inc.           +1-919-301-3266
Virtualization:  qemu.org | libvirt.org