[Libosinfo] [v2 1/8] API to query format of device driver

[Christophe Fergeau]

On Mon, Feb 18, 2013 at 07:45:09PM +0200, Zeeshan Ali (Khattak) wrote:
> On Mon, Feb 18, 2013 at 7:05 PM, Christophe Fergeau <cfergeau at redhat.com> wrote:
> > On Mon, Feb 18, 2013 at 04:03:12PM +0200, Zeeshan Ali (Khattak) wrote:
> >> On Mon, Feb 18, 2013 at 3:20 PM, Christophe Fergeau <cfergeau at redhat.com> wrote:
> >> > On Sat, Feb 16, 2013 at 05:38:27AM +0200, Zeeshan Ali (Khattak) wrote:
> >> >> Actually you and I both missed something important here: The libosinfo
> >> >> db doesn't just come from libosinfo. We allow downstream and apps to
> >> >> add to the DB. They can as well add new device drivers.
> >> >
> >> > Currently install scripts only support one format, so there is not much
> >> > point for downstream to add a driver in an unsupported format.
> >>
> >> 1. With my patches, winxp will support one format for preinstall
> >> drivers and another for postinstall.
> >
> > Hmm true, but both formats are of the type 'copy all listed files to the
> > installation disk, and libosinfo will know to make use of it'
> 
> ? If you add a postinstall driver to winxp that does not provide .cmd
> file, you can be sure that your driver will not be used. Similarly, if
> you add a pre-installable driver, a executable/cmd file isn't what the
> script is expecting.
> 
> >> 2. How do apps find out which format is supported if they want to add
> >> more drivers? Currently, only by looking at the scripts themselves
> >> (which is more like asking them to read the source). It would
> >> definitely be desirable to have a simple API like this to query such
> >> info.
> >
> > See my answer to your point 1.
> 
> Yes and I answered. If anyone adds driver(s) to DB, they really do
> need to know which format it must be in. Without APIs, they'll have to
> read the script template to figure it out.

Ok, I was initially very confused about your answer as what I understood
from this part of the email was "people writing xml to extend libosinfo DB
needs the osinfo_device_driver_get_format C API because they need
documentation about the formats we expect the drivers to be in", which did
not make a lot of sense to me.

From what you told me on IRC, it seems you are now indeed talking about
people who write XML snippets to extend libosinfo DB and you want to make
it more obvious to them what driver formats libosinfo expects. Please note
that so far I was only talking about the addition of
osinfo_device_driver_get_format in the public API and of nothing else.

Imo there are 2 different questions here
1.do we add extra driver format information to the XML? This is nice to
  at least people writing extensions to the libosinfo database
2.do we expose this information in libosinfo public C API?

So far, what I've said is that 2. is not useful and that I'm against it. 1.
however sounds ok to me.

Christophe
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