On Mon, Aug 28, 2006 at 11:53:09PM -0400, pvetere@xxxxxxxxxx wrote:
> Hi all. So, I found a bug in the python bindings that I'd really like to fix,
> but when I sat down to do so I quickly found myself mired in a swampy mess of
> code generation: generator.py. :-) Now, I feel compelled to ask -- why don't
> we just have a static libvirt.py file that is WYSIWYG? The generator.py
> program alone is longer than the file it generates, and having a static file
> would not only make the code easier to read, but would also make bug fixing
> much simpler. But, I'm sure there's got to be a good reason for it. :-)
Historic, the same generator is used by libxml2 and libxslt at least.
> Here's a program that produces the bug I tried to address:
>
> import libvirt
> def get_domain(dom_name):
> conn = libvirt.openReadOnly(None)
> domain = conn.lookupByName(dom_name)
> return domain
> d = get_domain("mydomain")
> print d.info()
>
> This is a fairly typical "factory" pattern I could imagine people using. The
> problem is that the connection object falls out of scope after the get_domain
> routine ends, and is therefore garbage collected. This leaves the "d" domain
> object with no valid connection, resulting in a "libvir: Xen error : failed Xen
> syscall ioctl 3166208" error. The simple solution would be for the connection
> object to pass a reference to itself into each domain object it creates. The
> domain objects would then maintain the reference until they are destroyed.
Hum, right, but really even at the C level you want to keep the connection
around as long as you manipulate the domain.
> I valiantly tried to follow the table-based patterns used in generator.py to fix
> this problem, but I found myself inventing somewhat arbitrary rules just to
> force the code I wanted it to output.
>
> And hence, $SUBJECT. :-)
Okay, this may look surprizing, but well ...
Now we can probably add a reference back from the domain to the connection,
but still dropping any handle to the connection is kind of weird.
Daniel
--
Red Hat Virtualization group http://redhat.com/virtualization/
Daniel Veillard | virtualization library http://libvirt.org/
veillard@xxxxxxxxxx | libxml GNOME XML XSLT toolkit http://xmlsoft.org/
http://veillard.com/ | Rpmfind RPM search engine http://rpmfind.net/