Re: [Qemu-devel] Re: RFC qdev path semantics

[Markus Armbruster]

Paul Brook <address@hidden> writes:

>> > Bus names are chosen by the system as follows:
>> > 
>> > * If the driver of the parent device model provides a name, use that.
>> > 
>> > * Else, if the parent device has id ID, use ID.NUM, where NUM is the bus
>> > 
>> >   number, counting from zero in creation order.
>> > 
>> > * Else, use TYPE.NUM, where TYPE is derived from the bus type, and NUM
>> > 
>> >   is the bus number, as above.
>> > 
>> > ### Paul proposes to drop ID.NUM.
>> 
>> ABI change: "-device lsi,id=my-scsi -device scsi-disk,bus=my-scsi.0" no
>> longer works.
>
> IMO this is a fundamentally broken ABI, so I don't care.

Users of this ABI won't appreciate that attitude.

I do support dropping ID.NUM, but we owe our users due ABI diligence.

>> > ### Paul proposes to either drop TYPE.NUM (and require drivers to
>> >     provide bus names), or make NUM count separately for each bus type.
>> 
>> Likewise.
>
> I'd be surprised if anyone actually uses absolute device paths at this time, 
> and they're probably going to be broken by other changes.

Yes.

> Using these default bus names as global identifiers is fixable using aliases
> (e.g. -device lsi,bus=pci.0).  I'd expect this to cover most interesting uses.
> See http://lists.nongnu.org/archive/html/qemu-devel/2010-06/msg02149.html

Keeping the old bus names work for the buses we create automatically
shouldn't be hard.  Only a few, and no ID.NUM there.  It's the
user-created buses that worry me.