[libvirt] [RFC PATCH 0/8] Introduce the virDomainDefineJSONFlags() public API

Back in 2005, when the libvirt project was started, XML was pretty much the only sensible, widely used format one could use to store structured data. A lot has changed since then, and these days you'd be hard pressed to find any API that does not use JSON for encoding information; in fact, we already use JSON heavily inside libvirt, for example to communicate with QEMU processes through QMP or store configuration data for use by the libvirt NSS plugin. The reasons for JSON's success over XML are plain to see: you get the same nicely structured data, but none of the ugly angle brackets or annoying repetition caused by having to both open *and* close elements explicitly; additionally, you get support for extremely useful and common data structures such as lists and dictionary out of the box, and even properly typed strings and numbers. It's just an overall much better data representation language. This RFC series provides the initial, very basic (yet fully functional) implementation of a JSON-based alternative to the existing virDomainDefineXML(); over time, we would introduce similar APIs for defining libvirt objects other than domains, such as for example networks. Once enough time has passed, we might even consider removing the XML-based APIs altogether and drop the XML parsing code along with our libxml2 dependency, making libvirt much leaner in the process. Andrea Bolognani (8): conf: Introduce virDomainDefParseJSONString() tests: Add qemujson2argvtest rpc: Add JSON to the list of fixups in gendispatch Introduce the virDomainDefineJSONFlags() public API remote: Implement virDomainDefineJSONFlags() support qemu: Add virDomainDefineJSONFlags() support virsh: Add JSON support to the 'define' subcommand news: Update for virDomainDefineJSONFlags() docs/news.xml | 11 + include/libvirt/libvirt-domain.h | 3 + include/libvirt/virterror.h | 1 + src/conf/domain_conf.c | 241 ++++ src/conf/domain_conf.h | 5 + src/driver-hypervisor.h | 6 + src/libvirt-domain.c | 45 + src/libvirt_private.syms | 1 + src/libvirt_public.syms | 1 + src/qemu/qemu_driver.c | 84 ++ src/remote/remote_driver.c | 3 +- src/remote/remote_protocol.x | 19 +- src/remote_protocol-structs | 8 + src/rpc/gendispatch.pl | 1 + src/util/virerror.c | 3 + tests/Makefile.am | 15 + tests/qemujson2argvdata/tiny.json | 29 + .../qemujson2argvdata/tiny.x86_64-latest.args | 33 + tests/qemujson2argvtest.c | 1001 +++++++++++++++++ tools/virsh-domain.c | 36 +- 20 files changed, 1540 insertions(+), 6 deletions(-) create mode 100644 tests/qemujson2argvdata/tiny.json create mode 100644 tests/qemujson2argvdata/tiny.x86_64-latest.args create mode 100644 tests/qemujson2argvtest.c -- 2.20.1