Re: [Qemu-devel] [RFC PATCH 19/32] qapi: Accept double-quoted strings

[Markus Armbruster <armbru@redhat.com>]

Marc-André Lureau <marcandre.lureau@gmail.com> writes:

> On Thu, Oct 5, 2017 at 6:41 AM, Markus Armbruster <armbru@redhat.com> wrote:
>> Marc-André Lureau <marcandre.lureau@gmail.com> writes:
>>
>>> On Mon, Oct 2, 2017 at 5:25 PM, Markus Armbruster <armbru@redhat.com> wrote:
>>>> The QAPI schema parser has always accepted only single-quoted strings,
>>>> even though JSON strings are double-quoted.  Accept double-quoted
>>>> strings as well, so you can write strings containing single quotes
>>>> without backslash escapes.
>>>>
>>>> Signed-off-by: Markus Armbruster <armbru@redhat.com>
>>>
>>> What's the motivation to allow both? If we were to switch from single
>>> to double quote only, that would make more sense.
>>
>> Abandoning single quotes now would require us to touch pretty much every
>> line of code in the schemas.  I don't think correcting quotes is worth
>> wrecking git-blame.
>>
>
> Recent (and upcoming) changes to the schema are already quite
> invasive. I think we could do it, convert all strings to double-quote,
> and it would help with getting the schema closer to a valid json.

Is the recent (and upcoming) churn *that* bad?  Got numbers?

> Fwiw, there are tools like
> https://commondatastorage.googleapis.com/chrome-infra-docs/flat/depot_tools/docs/html/git-hyper-blame.html
> to skip commits in git-blame. It's also fairly easy to run git blame
> before the reformatting commit.

Both techniques add friction...

>> Sadly, the schema language is neither JSON, nor an established extension
>> of JSON, nor Python.  This commit brings the schema language one step
>> closer to a superset of JSON.  I feel "homegrown superset" is a slightly
>> less bad idea than "homegrown with large overlap".
>>
>> Naming the schema files .json was in bad taste.
>>
>>> otherwise, patch looks good
>>
>> Ready to upgrade to R-by now?
>>
>> Want me to work more of my rationale into the commit message?