[Qemu-devel] [PATCH 00/19] RFC: Reporting QEMU binary capabilities

[Daniel P. Berrange]

As everyone here agrees, having management apps parse -help output
to determine the QEMU capabilities is not at all nice, because it
is an ill-defined & fragile data format. Looking more broadly these
same issues apply to all the other command line options that accept
a '?' flag for querying capabilities.

We have a very nice structured data format we could be using for
this: JSON. What's lacking is code to output all this information
in the JSON format. This patch series can thus be summarized as
'JSON for everything'

For reference, here is the full list of information libvirt currently
queries from QEMU:

  * Detection of command line flags (-help parsing)

    -no-kqemu, -no-kvm, -enable-kvm, -no-reboot
    -name, -uuid, -xen-domid, -domid, -drive
    -vga, -std-vga, -pcidevice, -mem-path
    -chardev, -balloon, -device, -rtc, -rtc-td-hack
    -no-hpet, -no-kvm-pit-reinjection, -tdf
    -fsdev -sdl

  * Detection of parameters (-help parsing)

     -drive format=
     -drive boot=
     -drive serial=
     -drive cache=
     -cpu cores=, threads=, sockets=
     -netdev vhost=

  * Detection of parameter values (-help parsing)

     -drive cache=writethrough|writeback|none
       vs
     -drive cache=default|on|off

  * Version number  (-help parsing)

    -netdev  + 0.13.0

    0.9.0  for VNC syntax

    0.10.0 for vnet hdr

  * Parse -M ?  output to get list of machine types + aliases

  * Parse -device pci-assign,? to check for 'configfd' parameter

  * Parse -cpu ?  to get list of named CPU types

  * Parse binary name (qemu-system-XXXX) to guess arch of target


This isn't an 100% exhaustive list of things that we would like
to be able to get access to though. It can likely cover all of
the following:

 * Version

      QEMU major, minor, micro numbers. KVM version. Package
      version

 * Devices

      List of device names. Parameter names. Parameter value
      data types. Allowed strings for enums

 * Arguments

      List of command line arguments. Parameter names. Parameter
      value data types. Allowed strings for enums

 * Machine types

      List of names + aliases
      List of default devices in machine

 * CPU types

      List of names, associated feature flags, all allowed
      feature flags

 * Target info

      Arch name, wordsize

 * Monitor commands

      List of all monitor commands. Parameter names. Parameter
      value data types. Allowed strings for enums

 * Block device backends

      List of all block device backends. Parameter names.
      Parameter value data types. Allowed strings for enums

 * Netdev device backends

      List of all netdev device backends. Parameter names.
      Parameter value data types. Allowed strings for enums

 * Chardev device backends

      List of all chardev device backends. Parameter names.
      Parameter value data types. Allowed strings for enums


This patch series attempts to satisfy as much of this as is
feasible with the current QEMU codebase structure. The series
comprises four stages

 * Some basic infrastructure. Support for JSON pretty printing.
   Introduction of standardized helpers for converting enums
   to/from strings. Introduction of an 'enum' data type for
   QemuOpt to expose a formal list of valid values & simplify
   config handling / parsing. Compile time assertion checking

 * Convert driver, netdev & rtc config options to use the new
   enum data type for all appropriate args

 * Add new QMP monitor commands exposing data for machine
   types, devices, cpu types, arch target, argv, config params,
   and netdev backends.

 * Add a new '-capabilities' command line arg as syntactic
   sugar for the monitor commands that just report on static
   info about the QEMU binary.

The main problem encountered with this patch series is the
split between argv and config parameters. The qemu-config.c
file provides the information is a good data format, allowing
programatic access to the list of parameters for each config
option (eg, the 'cache', 'file', 'aio', etc bits for -drive).
There are some issues with it though

 - It lacks a huge amount of coverage wrt to the full argv
   available, even simple things like the '-m' argument
   don't exist.

 - It is inconsistent in handling parameters. eg it  hands
   off validation of netdev backends to other code, to allow
   for handling of different parameters for tap vs user vs
   socket backends.  For chardev backends though, it directly
   includes a union of all possible parameters.

Ideally the 'query-argv' command would not be required, but
unless those problems with the qemu-config are resolved, it
is the only way to access alot of the information. This is
sub-optimal because although it lets apps easily determine
whether an arg like '-smp' is present, it still leaves them
parsing that args' help string to discover parameters.

This series is lacking a 'query-blockdev' and 'query-chardev'
commands to report on availability of backends for -blockdev
and '-chardev' commands.

Finally the existing 'query-commands' output is lacking any
information about the parameters associated with each command.
This needs to be addressed somehow.

In summary though, IMHO, this patch series provides a good
base for providing information about static QEMU binary
capabilities to applications. It should ensure apps never
again need to go anywhere near -help, -M ?, -cpu ?, -device ?,
-soundhw ? and other such ill defined output formats.

NB, I know this patch series will probably clash horribly
with other patch series recently posted for review, in
particular Jes' cleanup of vl.c   I will rebase as required
if any of those get merged.

This series is currently based on GIT master as of:

  commit fd1dc858370d9a9ac7ea2512812c3a152ee6484b
  Author: Edgar E. Iglesias <address@hidden>
  Date:   Mon Jun 7 11:54:27 2010 +0200

Regards,
Daniel

 Makefile.objs                |    2 
 block.c                      |   32 +-
 block.h                      |   55 ++++
 cpus.c                       |   78 ++++++
 cpus.h                       |    1 
 hw/boards.h                  |    2 
 hw/mc146818rtc.c             |    8 
 hw/qdev.c                    |  148 +++++++++++++
 hw/qdev.h                    |    2 
 monitor.c                    |  167 ++++++++++++++
 monitor.h                    |    5 
 net.c                        |  173 ++++++++++-----
 net.h                        |    2 
 qemu-config.c                |  228 +++++++++++++++++++-
 qemu-config.h                |    2 
 qemu-enum.c                  |   44 +++
 qemu-enum.h                  |   45 ++++
 qemu-option.c                |   35 +++
 qemu-option.h                |   14 +
 qemu-options.hx              |    9 
 qjson.c                      |   55 ++++
 qjson.h                      |    1 
 sysemu.h                     |   43 +++
 target-arm/cpu.h             |    7 
 target-arm/helper.c          |   21 +
 target-cris/cpu.h            |    7 
 target-cris/translate.c      |   22 +
 target-i386/cpu.h            |    7 
 target-i386/cpuid.c          |   79 +++++++
 target-m68k/cpu.h            |    9 
 target-m68k/helper.c         |   23 ++
 target-mips/cpu.h            |    7 
 target-mips/translate.c      |    4 
 target-mips/translate_init.c |   19 +
 target-ppc/cpu.h             |    7 
 target-ppc/translate.c       |    4 
 target-ppc/translate_init.c  |   17 +
 target-sh4/cpu.h             |    8 
 target-sh4/translate.c       |   23 ++
 target-sparc/cpu.h           |    9 
 target-sparc/helper.c        |   60 +++++
 verify.h                     |  164 ++++++++++++++
 vl.c                         |  482 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++--------------
 43 files changed, 1869 insertions(+), 261 deletions(-)