qapi: Document introspection stability considerations

We are not ready (and might never be ready) to declare
introspection stable between releases. Clients written to
control multiple versions of qemu, and desiring to know
whether a particular member is supported for a given
command, must be prepared to locate that member in spite
of qapi changes that may affect the member's location or
type within the overall object, even though such changes
did not break QMP wire back-compatibility.

Signed-off-by: Eric Blake <eblake@redhat.com>
Message-Id: <1447264202-19554-1-git-send-email-eblake@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Markus Armbruster <armbru@redhat.com>

diff --git a/docs/qapi-code-gen.txt b/docs/qapi-code-gen.txt
index f9fa6f3d96f0c7b3d2d6480ddfd98790fa6d92c9..ceb9a782d0457c4bb9ec9c9a03eb3b1aa8a293b2 100644 (file)
--- a/docs/qapi-code-gen.txt
+++ b/docs/qapi-code-gen.txt
@@ -514,6 +514,17 @@ exactly the server (QEMU) supports.
 For this purpose, QMP provides introspection via command
 query-qmp-schema.  QGA currently doesn't support introspection.
 
+While Client JSON Protocol wire compatibility should be maintained
+between qemu versions, we cannot make the same guarantees for
+introspection stability.  For example, one version of qemu may provide
+a non-variant optional member of a struct, and a later version rework
+the member to instead be non-optional and associated with a variant.
+Likewise, one version of qemu may list a member with open-ended type
+'str', and a later version could convert it to a finite set of strings
+via an enum type; or a member may be converted from a specific type to
+an alternate that represents a choice between the original type and
+something else.
+
 query-qmp-schema returns a JSON array of SchemaInfo objects.  These
 objects together describe the wire ABI, as defined in the QAPI schema.
 There is no specified order to the SchemaInfo objects returned; a

diff --git a/qapi/introspect.json b/qapi/introspect.json
index e7c4c3e998826104ba22cfadafc3c86b23b2d5d5..9e9369e160a55b021176cf11c438f39ea8e9dd45 100644 (file)
--- a/qapi/introspect.json
+++ b/qapi/introspect.json
@@ -22,6 +22,15 @@
 # what's there), not interface specification.  The specification is in
 # the QAPI schema.
 #
+# Furthermore, while we strive to keep the QMP wire format
+# backwards-compatible across qemu versions, the introspection output
+# is not guaranteed to have the same stability.  For example, one
+# version of qemu may list an object member as an optional
+# non-variant, while another lists the same member only through the
+# object's variants; or the type of a member may change from a generic
+# string into a specific enum or from one specific type into an
+# alternate that includes the original type alongside something else.
+#
 # Returns: array of @SchemaInfo, where each element describes an
 # entity in the ABI: command, event, type, ...
 #