On Fri, 9 May 2025 at 11:04, Thomas Huth <th...@redhat.com> wrote:
> Thanks for your clarifications, Zhao! But I think this shows again the
> problem that we have hit a couple of times in the past already: Properties
> are currently used for both, config knobs for the users and internal
> switches for configuration of the machine. We lack a proper way to say "this
> property is usable for the user" and "this property is meant for internal
> configuration only".
>
> I wonder whether we could maybe come up with a naming scheme to better
> distinguish the two sets, e.g. by using a prefix similar to the "x-" prefix
> for experimental properties? We could e.g. say that all properties starting
> with a "q-" are meant for QEMU-internal configuration only or something
> similar (and maybe even hide those from the default help output when running
> "-device xyz,help" ?)? Anybody any opinions or better ideas on this?
I think a q-prefix is potentially a bit clunky unless we also have
infrastructure to say eg DEFINE_INTERNAL_PROP_BOOL("foo", ...)
and have it auto-add the prefix, and to have the C APIs for
setting properties search for both "foo" and "q-foo" so you
don't have to write qdev_prop_set_bit(dev, "q-foo", ...).
thanks
-- PMM
