[Qemu-devel] Re: [PATCH] device-assignment: Rework "name" of assigned pci device

[Gerd Hoffmann]

  Hi,

> As far as I can tell, "name" predates the qdev conversion, and was used
> just for error messages and such.

Yes, was already there when I touched the code the first time.

> It defaulted to "host".  When Gerd
> did the qdev conversion, he made "id" default to "name", then "host".
> See commit 6b5bbd04.
>
> Defaulting "id" that way was probably not such a good idea.  We
> generally don't make up qdev IDs, because that risks collision with
> user-specified IDs.
>
> Since we've broken compatibility already, I figure we could just as well
> stop defaulting "id" to "host".  When we need to identify the device to
> the user, use "id" if it exists, else its PCI address.

Agree, we should not make up defaults for 'id'.  I did that in a few 
places where some naming existed already to ease transition.  nics with 
name= used to get that as default id too.  But in the end it turned out 
it caused more trouble than it helped ...

cheers,
  Gerd