Re: [Qemu-devel] Non-flat command line option argument syntax

[Peter Krempa <pkrempa@redhat.com>]

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On Thu, Feb 02, 2017 at 20:42:33 +0100, Markus Armbruster wrote:

[...]

> === Comparison ===
> 
> In my opinion, dotted keys are weird and ugly, but at least they don't
> add to the quoting mess.  Structured values look better, except when
> they do add to the quoting mess.

From libvirt's point of view anything that can be easily generated from
the JSON representation into command line arguments is acceptable.
Neither uglyness, nor escaping worry us that much. Libvirt users usually
don't come into contact with the command line and if they do it's messy
anyways.

> I'm having a hard time deciding which one I like less :)

I don't like plain JSON. On the other hand I like the dotted syntax ...
mostly as I've already written the convertors for it a while ago :) [1]

Currently we already to that with anything '-object' related that we do
in libvirt (memory backing objects, master encryption key, etc) and for
a few certain network disk backing protocols:

I stole this example above:

We already generate this internally:
    '{ "file": {
       "driver": "gluster", "volume": "testvol",
       "path": "/path/a.qcow2", "debug": 9,
       "server": [ { "type": "tcp",
                     "host": "1.2.3.4", "port": "24007"},
                   { "type": "unix",
                     "socket": "/var/run/glusterd.socket" } ] } }'

And convert it to this:
>     -drive driver=qcow2,file.driver=gluster,
>            file.volume=testvol,file.path=/path/a.qcow2,file.debug=9,
>            file.server.0.type=tcp,
>            file.server.0.host=1.2.3.4,
>            file.server.0.port=24007,
>            file.server.1.type=unix,
>            file.server.1.socket=/var/run/glusterd.socket

There are unfortunately two implementations of the array generator:
For -object we use the repeated key method, and for gluster we use the
numbered method. It might be due to the fact that I tried to do bitmap
to array conversion, where the bitmap is represented by a list of
ranges. It was necessary for memory hotplug

Peter

[1] 331b2583ec2928b in libvirt introduces the first generator (2015/01)
    b7eef33df20dc19 adds the numbered array methot so that it can be
                    uset with gluster (2016/07)

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