On Thu, Jan 19, 2012 at 6:33 PM, Daniel P. Berrange <berrange@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > On Thu, Jan 19, 2012 at 05:17:30PM +0100, Christophe Fergeau wrote: >> On Thu, Jan 19, 2012 at 06:09:15PM +0200, Zeeshan Ali (Khattak) wrote: >> > On Thu, Jan 19, 2012 at 5:42 PM, Zeeshan Ali (Khattak) >> > >>> >> + >> > >>> >> + if (osinfo_list_get_length(OSINFO_LIST(devices)) > 0) >> > >>> >> + ret = OSINFO_DEVICE (osinfo_list_get_nth(OSINFO_LIST(devices), 0)); >> > >>> > >> > >>> > I think it would be better to return the full list and let the app decide whether >> > >>> > it wants the first item in the list or more than that. >> > >>> >> > >>> I guess, we can provide another function 'get_devices_by_property' as well.. >> > >> >> > >> What kind of properties do we get? Does it really make sense to only return >> > >> the first one and ignore the other results? I don't know what kind of >> > >> results this function returns, so hardcoding in the library this kind of >> > >> "arbitrarily pick one result, drop the rest" makes me uncomfortable. >> > > >> > > https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=668229 >> > >> > To help you avoid reading Vala code, the usecase is of creating a new >> > VM for a paritcular OS. The sensible thing to do would be to add only >> > devices supported by that OS. It also would usually make sense to add >> > only one device of a particular class/type not all. So IMHO there is >> > good chances that this function will be useful to other apps as well. >> >> I'm not questioning the usefulness of the function you want to add (or a >> variation on it), what I'm questioning is hardcoding the "let's only >> keep the first device in the list" in the library, it feels cleaner to >> return a list and let the application pick only the first device if it >> wants to. > > I tend to view libosinfo as providing the "mechanism" not the "policy", > so I'm inclined to say that this kind of API is better suited to the > application code. > > In the future, I see space for a "libvirt-install" library which > binds together libvirt-gobject & libosinfo with a set of policy > driven APIs for installing OS. As & when that library becomes a > reality, we can leverage code currently in Boxes, or other similar > apps. So there's no strong reason to push it all into libosinfo > right now, if it is getting into the realms of policy driven APIs. Understood! However get_devices_by_property() that I'm writing now doesn't dictate any policy so that could go into libosinfo? -- Regards, Zeeshan Ali (Khattak) FSF member#5124
