Re: [Qemu-block] [Qemu-devel] [PATCH v5 03/11] qom: support arbitrary non-scalar properties with -object

[Daniel P. Berrange]

On Thu, Jun 09, 2016 at 04:43:35PM +0200, Markus Armbruster wrote:
> "Daniel P. Berrange" <address@hidden> writes:
> 
> > The current -object command line syntax only allows for
> > creation of objects with scalar properties, or a list
> > with a fixed scalar element type. Objects which have
> > properties that are represented as structs in the QAPI
> > schema cannot be created using -object.
> >
> > This is a design limitation of the way the OptsVisitor
> > is written. It simply iterates over the QemuOpts values
> > as a flat list. The support for lists is enabled by
> > allowing the same key to be repeated in the opts string.
> >
> > It is not practical to extend the OptsVisitor to support
> > more complex data structures while also maintaining
> > the existing list handling behaviour that is relied upon
> > by other areas of QEMU.
> 
> It should be practical to create a new option input visitor that parses
> command line syntax straight into a QAPI visit, without the list magic,
> and with fewer or no restrictions.  Then we could start defining complex
> command line arguments as QAPI types, parse them straight into generated
> QAPI types, and dispense with the QDict wrangling.

Funnily enough I did actually start out trying to implement pretty
much exactly that. I found that in my new opts visitor, I was essentially
parsing the QemuOpts into QDict/QLists to handle the recursion from the
visitor. At this point I was starting to duplicate much code from QDict
and QmpInputVisitor, so it abandoned that approach and went for the more
general QemuOpts -> QDict crumping instead, since it the goal to be
achieved with simpler code overall.

Regards,
Daniel
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