Commit Graph

4 Commits

Author SHA1 Message Date
Eric Blake
39a65e2c24 qapi: Document introspection stability considerations
We are not ready (and might never be ready) to declare
introspection stable between releases. Clients written to
control multiple versions of qemu, and desiring to know
whether a particular member is supported for a given
command, must be prepared to locate that member in spite
of qapi changes that may affect the member's location or
type within the overall object, even though such changes
did not break QMP wire back-compatibility.

Signed-off-by: Eric Blake <eblake@redhat.com>
Message-Id: <1447264202-19554-1-git-send-email-eblake@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Markus Armbruster <armbru@redhat.com>
2015-11-17 08:42:07 +01:00
Eric Blake
f545504420 qapi-introspect: Document lack of sorting
qapi-code-gen.txt already claims that types, commands, and
events share a common namespace; set this in stone by further
documenting that our introspection output will never have
collisions with the same name tied to more than one meta-type.

Our largest QMP enum currently has 125 values, our largest
object type has 27 members, and the mean for each is less than
10.  These sizes are small enough that the per-element overhead
of O(log n) binary searching probably outweighs the speed
possible with direct O(n) linear searching (a better algorithm
with more overhead will only beat a leaner naive algorithm only
as you scale to larger input sizes).

Arguably, the overall SchemaInfo array could be sorted by name;
there, we currently have 531 entities, large enough for a binary
search to be faster than linear.  However, remember that we have
mutually-recursive types, which means there is no topological
ordering that will allow clients to learn all information about
that type in a single linear pass; thus clients will want to do
random access over the data, and they will probably read the
introspection output into a hashtable for O(1) lookup rather
than O(log n) binary searching, at which point, pre-sorting our
introspection output doesn't help the client.

It doesn't help that sorting can be subjective if you introduce
locales into the mix (I'm not experienced enough with Python
to know for sure, but at least it looks like it defaults to
sorting in the C locale even when run under a different locale).
And while our current introspection output is deterministic
(because we visit entities in a sorted order), we may want
to change that order in the future (such as using OrderedDict
to stick to .json declaration order).

For these reasons, we simply document that clients should not
rely on any particular order of items in introspection output.
And since it is now a documented part of the contract, we have
the freedom to later rearrange output if needed, without
worrying about breaking well-written clients.

Signed-off-by: Eric Blake <eblake@redhat.com>
Message-Id: <1446791754-23823-13-git-send-email-eblake@redhat.com>
[Commit message tweaked]
Signed-off-by: Markus Armbruster <armbru@redhat.com>
2015-11-10 08:10:28 +01:00
Markus Armbruster
1a9a507b2e qapi-introspect: Hide type names
To eliminate the temptation for clients to look up types by name
(which are not ABI), replace all type names by meaningless strings.

Reduces output of query-schema by 13 out of 85KiB.

As a debugging aid, provide option -u to suppress the hiding.

Signed-off-by: Markus Armbruster <armbru@redhat.com>
Reviewed-by: Eric Blake <eblake@redhat.com>
Message-Id: <1442401589-24189-27-git-send-email-armbru@redhat.com>
2015-09-21 09:56:49 +02:00
Markus Armbruster
39a1815816 qapi: New QMP command query-qmp-schema for QMP introspection
qapi/introspect.json defines the introspection schema.  It's designed
for QMP introspection, but should do for similar uses, such as QGA.

The introspection schema does not reflect all the rules and
restrictions that apply to QAPI schemata.  A valid QAPI schema has an
introspection value conforming to the introspection schema, but the
converse is not true.

Introspection lowers away a number of schema details, and makes
implicit things explicit:

* The built-in types are declared with their JSON type.

  All integer types are mapped to 'int', because how many bits we use
  internally is an implementation detail.  It could be pressed into
  external interface service as very approximate range information,
  but that's a bad idea.  If we need range information, we better do
  it properly.

* Implicit type definitions are made explicit, and given
  auto-generated names:

  - Array types, named by appending "List" to the name of their
    element type, like in generated C.

  - The enumeration types implicitly defined by simple union types,
    named by appending "Kind" to the name of their simple union type,
    like in generated C.

  - Types that don't occur in generated C.  Their names start with ':'
    so they don't clash with the user's names.

* All type references are by name.

* The struct and union types are generalized into an object type.

* Base types are flattened.

* Commands take a single argument and return a single result.

  Dictionary argument or list result is an implicit type definition.

  The empty object type is used when a command takes no arguments or
  produces no results.

  The argument is always of object type, but the introspection schema
  doesn't reflect that.

  The 'gen': false directive is omitted as implementation detail.

  The 'success-response' directive is omitted as well for now, even
  though it's not an implementation detail, because it's not used by
  QMP.

* Events carry a single data value.

  Implicit type definition and empty object type use, just like for
  commands.

  The value is of object type, but the introspection schema doesn't
  reflect that.

* Types not used by commands or events are omitted.

  Indirect use counts as use.

* Optional members have a default, which can only be null right now

  Instead of a mandatory "optional" flag, we have an optional default.
  No default means mandatory, default null means optional without
  default value.  Non-null is available for optional with default
  (possible future extension).

* Clients should *not* look up types by name, because type names are
  not ABI.  Look up the command or event you're interested in, then
  follow the references.

  TODO Should we hide the type names to eliminate the temptation?

New generator scripts/qapi-introspect.py computes an introspection
value for its input, and generates a C variable holding it.

It can generate awfully long lines.  Marked TODO.

A new test-qmp-input-visitor test case feeds its result for both
tests/qapi-schema/qapi-schema-test.json and qapi-schema.json to a
QmpInputVisitor to verify it actually conforms to the schema.

New QMP command query-qmp-schema takes its return value from that
variable.  Its reply is some 85KiBytes for me right now.

If this turns out to be too much, we have a couple of options:

* We can use shorter names in the JSON.  Not the QMP style.

* Optionally return the sub-schema for commands and events given as
  arguments.

  Right now qmp_query_schema() sends the string literal computed by
  qmp-introspect.py.  To compute sub-schema at run time, we'd have to
  duplicate parts of qapi-introspect.py in C.  Unattractive.

* Let clients cache the output of query-qmp-schema.

  It changes only on QEMU upgrades, i.e. rarely.  Provide a command
  query-qmp-schema-hash.  Clients can have a cache indexed by hash,
  and re-query the schema only when they don't have it cached.  Even
  simpler: put the hash in the QMP greeting.

Signed-off-by: Markus Armbruster <armbru@redhat.com>
Reviewed-by: Eric Blake <eblake@redhat.com>
2015-09-21 09:56:49 +02:00