f545504420
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>
QEMU README
===========
QEMU is a generic and open source machine & userspace emulator and
virtualizer.
QEMU is capable of emulating a complete machine in software without any
need for hardware virtualization support. By using dynamic translation,
it achieves very good performance. QEMU can also integrate with the Xen
and KVM hypervisors to provide emulated hardware while allowing the
hypervisor to manage the CPU. With hypervisor support, QEMU can achieve
near native performance for CPUs. When QEMU emulates CPUs directly it is
capable of running operating systems made for one machine (e.g. an ARMv7
board) on a different machine (e.g. an x86_64 PC board).
QEMU is also capable of providing userspace API virtualization for Linux
and BSD kernel interfaces. This allows binaries compiled against one
architecture ABI (e.g. the Linux PPC64 ABI) to be run on a host using a
different architecture ABI (e.g. the Linux x86_64 ABI). This does not
involve any hardware emulation, simply CPU and syscall emulation.
QEMU aims to fit into a variety of use cases. It can be invoked directly
by users wishing to have full control over its behaviour and settings.
It also aims to facilitate integration into higher level management
layers, by providing a stable command line interface and monitor API.
It is commonly invoked indirectly via the libvirt library when using
open source applications such as oVirt, OpenStack and virt-manager.
QEMU as a whole is released under the GNU General Public License,
version 2. For full licensing details, consult the LICENSE file.
Building
========
QEMU is multi-platform software intended to be buildable on all modern
Linux platforms, OS-X, Win32 (via the Mingw64 toolchain) and a variety
of other UNIX targets. The simple steps to build QEMU are:
mkdir build
cd build
../configure
make
Complete details of the process for building and configuring QEMU for
all supported host platforms can be found in the qemu-tech.html file.
Additional information can also be found online via the QEMU website:
http://qemu-project.org/Hosts/Linux
http://qemu-project.org/Hosts/W32
Submitting patches
==================
The QEMU source code is maintained under the GIT version control system.
git clone git://git.qemu-project.org/qemu.git
When submitting patches, the preferred approach is to use 'git
format-patch' and/or 'git send-email' to format & send the mail to the
qemu-devel@nongnu.org mailing list. All patches submitted must contain
a 'Signed-off-by' line from the author. Patches should follow the
guidelines set out in the HACKING and CODING_STYLE files.
Additional information on submitting patches can be found online via
the QEMU website
http://qemu-project.org/Contribute/SubmitAPatch
http://qemu-project.org/Contribute/TrivialPatches
Bug reporting
=============
The QEMU project uses Launchpad as its primary upstream bug tracker. Bugs
found when running code built from QEMU git or upstream released sources
should be reported via:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/qemu/
If using QEMU via an operating system vendor pre-built binary package, it
is preferable to report bugs to the vendor's own bug tracker first. If
the bug is also known to affect latest upstream code, it can also be
reported via launchpad.
For additional information on bug reporting consult:
http://qemu-project.org/Contribute/ReportABug
Contact
=======
The QEMU community can be contacted in a number of ways, with the two
main methods being email and IRC
- qemu-devel@nongnu.org
http://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/qemu-devel
- #qemu on irc.oftc.net
Information on additional methods of contacting the community can be
found online via the QEMU website:
http://qemu-project.org/Contribute/StartHere
-- End