Re: [libvirt] new API to get list of *all* interfaces matching a MAC
On Tue, Aug 25, 2009 at 04:04:44PM +0200, Daniel Veillard wrote:
On Tue, Aug 25, 2009 at 10:15:05AM +0100, Daniel P. Berrange wrote:
> On Mon, Aug 24, 2009 at 03:24:13PM -0400, Laine Stump wrote:
> > (This probably seems like overanalysis of a simple problem. That's what
> > I'm best at ;-)
> >
> > Due to oversight, the function virInterfaceLookupByMACString() can only
> > return a single interface, but it's possible that a host may have more
> > than one interface with the same MAC. Since the API had already been
> > released by the time we realized this, the existing function will remain
> > and a new one added that can return a list of interfaces. This new API
> > will need to deal with the fact that the list length is effectively
> > unbounded. I can see three ways of dealing with this, and want to learn
> > which is preferred by others before spending time on the implementation.
>
> I'm rather wondering why exactly we need another API.
Basically to be able to obsolete the broken one, and explain in the
documentation the function limitation and suggest using the new one.
Way simpler to explain than suggesting doing the full extract and leave
the user filter.
I don't buy that argument. We have a clear split between vir*Lookup*
methods returning a single object, and vir*List* methods giving back
multiple objects, which is consistent across all the APIs. I don't
think we need to do a specialcase for network interfaces, for something
that'll rarely be an issue in the real world. The existing behaviour
is easy to understand & document & deal with from applicaton code as
it is.
Daniel
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