Currently, we try to rewrite every occurrence of "backing": null into "backing": "" in qmp_blockdev_add(). However, that breaks using the same "backing": null construction in json:{} file names (which do not go through qmp_blockdev_add()). Currently, these then just behave as if the option has not been specified.
Since there is actually only one place where we evaluate the @backing option to find out whether not to use a backing file, we can instead just check for null there. It doesn't matter that this changes the runtime state of the option from "" to null, because nobody really does anything with that runtime state anyway (except put it into qemu again, but qemu doesn't care whether it's "" or null). And in the future, it's much better if we get it to be null in that runtime state sooner than later -- see patch 3. :-) Max Reitz (3): qapi: Add qdict_is_null() block: Handle null backing link block: Deprecate "backing": "" qapi/block-core.json | 4 ++-- include/qapi/qmp/qdict.h | 1 + block.c | 6 +++++- blockdev.c | 14 -------------- qobject/qdict.c | 10 ++++++++++ qemu-doc.texi | 7 +++++++ qemu-options.hx | 4 ++-- tests/qemu-iotests/089 | 20 ++++++++++++++++++++ tests/qemu-iotests/089.out | 8 ++++++++ 9 files changed, 55 insertions(+), 19 deletions(-) -- 2.13.6