qapi: Simplify semantics of visit_next_list()

The semantics of the list visit are somewhat baroque, with the
following pseudocode when FooList is used:

start()
for (prev = head; cur = next(prev); prev = &cur) {
    visit(&cur->value)
}

Note that these semantics (advance before visit) requires that
the first call to next() return the list head, while all other
calls return the next element of the list; that is, every visitor
implementation is required to track extra state to decide whether
to return the input as-is, or to advance.  It also requires an
argument of 'GenericList **' to next(), solely because the first
iteration might need to modify the caller's GenericList head, so
that all other calls have to do a layer of dereferencing.

Thankfully, we only have two uses of list visits in the entire
code base: one in spapr_drc (which completely avoids
visit_next_list(), feeding in integers from a different source
than uint8List), and one in qapi-visit.py.  That is, all other
list visitors are generated in qapi-visit.c, and share the same
paradigm based on a qapi FooList type, so we can refactor how
lists are laid out with minimal churn among clients.

We can greatly simplify things by hoisting the special case
into the start() routine, and flipping the order in the loop
to visit before advance:

start(head)
for (tail = *head; tail; tail = next(tail)) {
    visit(&tail->value)
}

With the simpler semantics, visitors have less state to track,
the argument to next() is reduced to 'GenericList *', and it
also becomes obvious whether an input visitor is allocating a
FooList during visit_start_list() (rather than the old way of
not knowing if an allocation happened until the first
visit_next_list()).  As a minor drawback, we now allocate in
two functions instead of one, and have to pass the size to
both functions (unless we were to tweak the input visitors to
cache the size to start_list for reuse during next_list, but
that defeats the goal of less visitor state).

The signature of visit_start_list() is chosen to match
visit_start_struct(), with the new parameters after 'name'.

The spapr_drc case is a virtual visit, done by passing NULL for
list, similarly to how NULL is passed to visit_start_struct()
when a qapi type is not used in those visits.  It was easy to
provide these semantics for qmp-output and dealloc visitors,
and a bit harder for qmp-input (several prerequisite patches
refactored things to make this patch straightforward).  But it
turned out that the string and opts visitors munge enough other
state during visit_next_list() to make it easier to just
document and require a GenericList visit for now; an assertion
will remind us to adjust things if we need the semantics in the
future.

Several pre-requisite cleanup patches made the reshuffling of
the various visitors easier; particularly the qmp input visitor.

Signed-off-by: Eric Blake <eblake@redhat.com>
Message-Id: <1461879932-9020-24-git-send-email-eblake@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Markus Armbruster <armbru@redhat.com>

1 files changed, 26 insertions, 23 deletions

diff --git a/include/qapi/visitor.h b/include/qapi/visitor.h
index fe268fe78d..8de6b436fb 100644
--- a/include/qapi/visitor.h
+++ b/include/qapi/visitor.h
@@ -176,7 +176,7 @@
  *  if (err) {
  *      goto out;
  *  }
- *  visit_start_list(v, "list", &err);
+ *  visit_start_list(v, "list", NULL, 0, &err);
  *  if (err) {
  *      goto outobj;
  *  }
@@ -281,19 +281,27 @@ void visit_end_struct(Visitor *v);
  * @name expresses the relationship of this list to its parent
  * container; see the general description of @name above.
  *
+ * @list must be non-NULL for a real walk, in which case @size
+ * determines how much memory an input visitor will allocate into
+ * *@list (at least sizeof(GenericList)).  Some visitors also allow
+ * @list to be NULL for a virtual walk, in which case @size is
+ * ignored.
+ *
  * @errp obeys typical error usage, and reports failures such as a
- * member @name is not present, or present but not a list.
+ * member @name is not present, or present but not a list.  On error,
+ * input visitors set *@list to NULL.
  *
  * After visit_start_list() succeeds, the caller may visit its members
- * one after the other.  A real visit uses visit_next_list() for
- * traversing the linked list, while a virtual visit uses other means.
- * For each list element, call the appropriate visit_type_FOO() with
- * name set to NULL and obj set to the address of the value member of
- * the list element.  Finally, visit_end_list() needs to be called to
- * clean up, even if intermediate visits fail.  See the examples
- * above.
+ * one after the other.  A real visit (where @obj is non-NULL) uses
+ * visit_next_list() for traversing the linked list, while a virtual
+ * visit (where @obj is NULL) uses other means.  For each list
+ * element, call the appropriate visit_type_FOO() with name set to
+ * NULL and obj set to the address of the value member of the list
+ * element.  Finally, visit_end_list() needs to be called to clean up,
+ * even if intermediate visits fail.  See the examples above.
  */
-void visit_start_list(Visitor *v, const char *name, Error **errp);
+void visit_start_list(Visitor *v, const char *name, GenericList **list,
+                      size_t size, Error **errp);
 
 /*
  * Iterate over a GenericList during a non-virtual list visit.
@@ -301,20 +309,15 @@ void visit_start_list(Visitor *v, const char *name, Error **errp);
  * @size represents the size of a linked list node (at least
  * sizeof(GenericList)).
  *
- * @list must not be NULL; on the first call, @list contains the
- * address of the list head, and on subsequent calls *@list must be
- * the previously returned value.  Should be called in a loop until a
- * NULL return or error occurs; for each non-NULL return, the caller
- * then calls the appropriate visit_type_*() for the element type
- * of the list, with that function's name parameter set to NULL and
- * obj set to the address of (*@list)->value.
- *
- * FIXME: This interface is awkward; it requires all callbacks to
- * track whether it is the first or a subsequent call.  A better
- * interface would pass the head of the list through
- * visit_start_list().
+ * @tail must not be NULL; on the first call, @tail is the value of
+ * *list after visit_start_list(), and on subsequent calls @tail must
+ * be the previously returned value.  Should be called in a loop until
+ * a NULL return or error occurs; for each non-NULL return, the caller
+ * then calls the appropriate visit_type_*() for the element type of
+ * the list, with that function's name parameter set to NULL and obj
+ * set to the address of @tail->value.
  */
-GenericList *visit_next_list(Visitor *v, GenericList **list, size_t size);
+GenericList *visit_next_list(Visitor *v, GenericList *tail, size_t size);
 
 /*
  * Complete a list visit started earlier.