qapi: Allow anonymous base for flat union

Rather than requiring all flat unions to explicitly create
a separate base struct, we can allow the qapi schema to specify
the common members via an inline dictionary. This is similar to
how commands can specify an inline anonymous type for its 'data'.
We already have several struct types that only exist to serve as
a single flat union's base; the next commit will clean them up.
In particular, this patch's change to the BlockdevOptions example
in qapi-code-gen.txt will actually be done in the real QAPI schema.

Now that anonymous bases are legal, we need to rework the
flat-union-bad-base negative test (as previously written, it
forms what is now valid QAPI; tweak it to now provide coverage
of a new error message path), and add a positive test in
qapi-schema-test to use an anonymous base (making the integer
argument optional, for even more coverage).

Note that this patch only allows anonymous bases for flat unions;
simple unions are already enough syntactic sugar that we do not
want to burden them further.  Meanwhile, while it would be easy
to also allow an anonymous base for structs, that would be quite
redundant, as the members can be put right into the struct
instead.

Signed-off-by: Eric Blake <eblake@redhat.com>
Message-Id: <1458254921-17042-15-git-send-email-eblake@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Markus Armbruster <armbru@redhat.com>

1 files changed, 13 insertions, 13 deletions

diff --git a/docs/qapi-code-gen.txt b/docs/qapi-code-gen.txt
index 12af1b8cef..0e4bafff08 100644
--- a/docs/qapi-code-gen.txt
+++ b/docs/qapi-code-gen.txt
@@ -284,7 +284,7 @@ better than open-coding the member to be type 'str'.
 === Union types ===
 
 Usage: { 'union': STRING, 'data': DICT }
-or:    { 'union': STRING, 'data': DICT, 'base': STRUCT-NAME,
+or:    { 'union': STRING, 'data': DICT, 'base': STRUCT-NAME-OR-DICT,
          'discriminator': ENUM-MEMBER-OF-BASE }
 
 Union types are used to let the user choose between several different
@@ -320,13 +320,16 @@ an implicit C enum 'NameKind' is created, corresponding to the union
 the union can be named 'max', as this would collide with the implicit
 enum.  The value for each branch can be of any type.
 
-A flat union definition specifies a struct as its base, and
-avoids nesting on the wire.  All branches of the union must be
-complex types, and the top-level members of the union dictionary on
-the wire will be combination of members from both the base type and the
-appropriate branch type (when merging two dictionaries, there must be
-no keys in common).  The 'discriminator' member must be the name of a
-non-optional enum-typed member of the base struct.
+A flat union definition avoids nesting on the wire, and specifies a
+set of common members that occur in all variants of the union.  The
+'base' key must specifiy either a type name (the type must be a
+struct, not a union), or a dictionary representing an anonymous type.
+All branches of the union must be complex types, and the top-level
+members of the union dictionary on the wire will be combination of
+members from both the base type and the appropriate branch type (when
+merging two dictionaries, there must be no keys in common).  The
+'discriminator' member must be the name of a non-optional enum-typed
+member of the base struct.
 
 The following example enhances the above simple union example by
 adding an optional common member 'read-only', renaming the
@@ -334,10 +337,8 @@ discriminator to something more applicable than the simple union's
 default of 'type', and reducing the number of {} required on the wire:
 
  { 'enum': 'BlockdevDriver', 'data': [ 'file', 'qcow2' ] }
- { 'struct': 'BlockdevOptionsBase',
-   'data': { 'driver': 'BlockdevDriver', '*read-only': 'bool' } }
  { 'union': 'BlockdevOptions',
-   'base': 'BlockdevOptionsBase',
+   'base': { 'driver': 'BlockdevDriver', '*read-only': 'bool' },
    'discriminator': 'driver',
    'data': { 'file': 'BlockdevOptionsFile',
              'qcow2': 'BlockdevOptionsQcow2' } }
@@ -366,10 +367,9 @@ union has a struct with a single member named 'data'.  That is,
 is identical on the wire to:
 
  { 'enum': 'Enum', 'data': ['one', 'two'] }
- { 'struct': 'Base', 'data': { 'type': 'Enum' } }
  { 'struct': 'Branch1', 'data': { 'data': 'str' } }
  { 'struct': 'Branch2', 'data': { 'data': 'int' } }
- { 'union': 'Flat', 'base': 'Base', 'discriminator': 'type',
+ { 'union': 'Flat': 'base': { 'type': 'Enum' }, 'discriminator': 'type',
    'data': { 'one': 'Branch1', 'two': 'Branch2' } }