Re: [PATCH 0/2] qapi/qom: use correct field name when getting/setting alias properties

[Paolo Bonzini]

On 22/07/21 15:25, Markus Armbruster wrote:
> Since patch submitters tend to submit code that works for the success
> case, I like to test a few failure cases before anything else.  Gotcha:
>
>      $ qemu-system-x86_64 -machine pc,pflash0=xxx
>      qemu-system-x86_64: Property 'cfi.pflash01.drive' can't find value 'xxx'
>
> The error message is misleading.

Indeed I knew about this, and even thought briefly about how to fix it 
before realizing it is not a regression (which is also why I didn't 
think of including it in the commit message).

All the ways I could think about for a fix involved looking at the error 
class, and possibly even adding a dictionary of key-value pairs for some 
error classes.  I know you don't really like error classes and you 
probably would like the idea of key-value pairs even less---and to be 
honest I didn't really have a plan to implement any of that.

Paolo

> This is not a "must not commit" issue.  Fixing a regression in time for
> the release at the price of a bad error message is still a win.  The bad
> error message needs fixing all the same, just not necessarily before the
> release.
>
> Since mere thinking doesn't rock the release boat: any ideas on how this
> could be fixed?