Re: [Qemu-devel] [PATCH v3 3/3] Change other funcitons referring to feature_word_info[]

[Eduardo Habkost]

On Thu, Sep 06, 2018 at 06:00:29AM +0000, Hu, Robert wrote:
> 
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Eric Blake [mailto:address@hidden
> > Sent: Thursday, September 6, 2018 1:41
> > To: Eduardo Habkost <address@hidden>
> > Cc: Robert Hoo <address@hidden>; Paolo Bonzini
> > <address@hidden>; Hu, Robert <address@hidden>; address@hidden;
> > address@hidden; address@hidden; Liu, Jingqi
> > <address@hidden>; Markus Armbruster <address@hidden>; Jiri
> > Denemark <address@hidden>
> > Subject: Re: [PATCH v3 3/3] Change other funcitons referring to
> > feature_word_info[]
> > 
> > On 09/05/2018 11:44 AM, Eduardo Habkost wrote:
> > > On Wed, Sep 05, 2018 at 10:32:33AM -0500, Eric Blake wrote:
> > >> On 09/05/2018 09:10 AM, Eduardo Habkost wrote:
> > >>> Question to the QAPI schema maintainers below:
> > >>>
> > >>
> > >>>>    ##
> > >>>> -{ 'struct': 'X86CPUFeatureWordInfo',
> > >>>> -  'data': { 'cpuid-input-eax': 'int',
> > >>>> -            '*cpuid-input-ecx': 'int',
> > >>>> -            'cpuid-register': 'X86CPURegister32',
> > >>>> +{ 'struct': 'X86CPUIDFeatureWordInfo',
> > >>>> +  'data': { 'input-eax': 'int',
> > >>>> +            '*input-ecx': 'int',
> > >>>> +            'register': 'X86CPURegister32',
> > >>>>                'features': 'int' } }
> > >>
> > >> You are renaming the struct (which is not visible over the wire), as
> > >> well as renaming members within the struct (which is visible, if this
> > >> type appears on the wire).
> > >>
> > >> However, 'grep FeatureWordInfo qapi/qapi-introspect.c' has no hits
> > >> either before or after this patch (well, first you have to build with
> > >> my currently-pending patch as part of Markus' pull request for this
> > >> trick to work, https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/qemu-devel/2018-
> > 08/msg05968.html).
> > >> Or, even without my patch, grepping for 'input-eax' has no hits as a
> > >> member name in any struct.  Which means that there are no QMP
> > >> commands currently exposing this struct over the wire.
> > >
> > > There is one: qom-get.
> > 
> > Oh, right, the nasty exception that is not visible to introspection :(
> > 
> > >>> AFAICS, this will break the existing libvirt code: it will make
> > >>> qemuMonitorJSONParseCPUx86Features() error out because it won't find
> > >>> the "input-eax" field on all X86CPUFeatureWordInfo elements.
> > >>
> > >> No, this change can't break libvirt, since I just proved there is no
> > >> QMP command that libvirt could be using that either supplies an input
> > >> member or expects an output member named "input-eax" in the first place.
> > >
> > > I'm sure it will break libvirt.  libvirt uses "qom-get path=<cpu-path>
> > > property=feature-words" to get X86FeatureWordInfo data, and it expects
> > > the returned data to have a "input-eax" field.
> > 
> > Yeah, since this type is used in the qom-get backdoor that evades 
> > introspection,
> > it's even more important that you follow the backwards-compatibility rules 
> > and
> > not rename or delete any previously-mandatory members, since libvirt CAN'T
> > introspect if such changes have happened.
> > 
> [Robert Hoo] 
> Oh, this is more complicated than my thought.
> So, Eduardo, how about leave the QAPI expansion for MSR based features to 
> other
> professional people?

I think it's now clear that we can't add MSR features to
"feature-words" in a compatible way, so any mechanism to
introspect MSR features will need a separate property or QMP
command.

I also think "feature-words" needs to be replaced with something
better.  Probably libvirt should be able to grab all information
it needs by looking at the boolean QOM properties instead of the
low-level info at "feature-words".

This means I agree to leave this functionality out of the MSR
feature patch series for now.

-- 
Eduardo