qapi: Add visit_type_null() visitor

Right now, qmp-output-visitor happens to produce a QNull result
if nothing is actually visited between the creation of the visitor
and the request for the resulting QObject.  A stronger protocol
would require that a QMP output visit MUST visit something.  But
to still be able to produce a JSON 'null' output, we need a new
visitor function that states our intentions.  Yes, we could say
that such a visit must go through visit_type_any(), but that
feels clunky.

So this patch introduces the new visit_type_null() interface and
its no-op interface in the dealloc visitor, and stubs in the
qmp visitors (the next patch will finish the implementation).
For the visitors that will not implement the callback, document
the situation. The code in qapi-visit-core unconditionally
dereferences the callback pointer, so that a segfault will inform
a developer if they need to implement the callback for their
choice of visitor.

Note that JSON has a primitive null type, with the single value
null; likewise with the QNull type for QObject; but for QAPI,
we just have the 'null' value without a null type.  We may
eventually want to add more support in QAPI for null (most likely,
we'd use it via an alternate type that permits 'null' or an
object); but we'll create that usage when we need it.

Signed-off-by: Eric Blake <eblake@redhat.com>
Message-Id: <1461879932-9020-15-git-send-email-eblake@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Markus Armbruster <armbru@redhat.com>

1 files changed, 3 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/include/qapi/visitor-impl.h b/include/qapi/visitor-impl.h
index 796d1800d4..88d27d58de 100644
--- a/include/qapi/visitor-impl.h
+++ b/include/qapi/visitor-impl.h
@@ -90,6 +90,9 @@ struct Visitor
     void (*type_any)(Visitor *v, const char *name, QObject **obj,
                      Error **errp);
 
+    /* Must be set to visit explicit null values.  */
+    void (*type_null)(Visitor *v, const char *name, Error **errp);
+
     /* Must be set for input visitors, optional otherwise.  The core
      * takes care of the return type in the public interface. */
     void (*optional)(Visitor *v, const char *name, bool *present);