Re: [libvirt] [PATCH] Don't free NULL network in cmdNetworkUpdate

> All _internal_ vir*Free functions should be NOPs. All public vir*Free > APIs (including virNetworkFree) are documented to explicitly fail on > NULL arguments (more precisely, on any argument not created by an > earlier API call), and we cannot change that behavior as it would be an > API change that violates back-compat. Why it would break backward compatibility? I think it will break forward compatibility instead (which we don't care about). That is, currently apps have to use: virXPtr obj = NULL; obj = virLookupBy..(); ... do something with obj; ret = 0; cleanup: if (obj) virXFree(obj); However, if virXFree would accept NULL, it won't affect older applications, while new can just: cleanup: virXFree(obj); But then again, this is forward compatibility (the code won't work with downgraded libvirtd) - but who cares?