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    02a57ae3
    qapi: Forbid empty unions and useless alternates · 02a57ae3
    Eric Blake authored
    
    
    Empty unions serve no purpose, and while we compile with gcc
    which permits them, strict C99 forbids them.  We happen to inject
    a dummy 'void *data' member into the C unions that represent QAPI
    unions and alternates, but we want to get rid of that member (it
    pollutes the namespace for no good reason), which would leave us
    with an empty union if the user didn't provide any branches.  While
    empty structs make sense in QAPI, empty unions don't add any
    expressiveness to the QMP language.  So prohibit them at parse
    time.  Update the documentation and testsuite to match.
    
    Note that the documentation already mentioned that alternates
    should have "two or more JSON data types"; so this also fixes
    the code to enforce that.  However, we have existing uses of a
    union type with only one branch, so the 2-or-more strictness
    is intentionally limited to alternates.
    
    Signed-off-by: default avatarEric Blake <eblake@redhat.com>
    Message-Id: <1455778109-6278-3-git-send-email-eblake@redhat.com>
    Signed-off-by: default avatarMarkus Armbruster <armbru@redhat.com>
    02a57ae3
    qapi: Forbid empty unions and useless alternates
    Eric Blake authored
    
    
    Empty unions serve no purpose, and while we compile with gcc
    which permits them, strict C99 forbids them.  We happen to inject
    a dummy 'void *data' member into the C unions that represent QAPI
    unions and alternates, but we want to get rid of that member (it
    pollutes the namespace for no good reason), which would leave us
    with an empty union if the user didn't provide any branches.  While
    empty structs make sense in QAPI, empty unions don't add any
    expressiveness to the QMP language.  So prohibit them at parse
    time.  Update the documentation and testsuite to match.
    
    Note that the documentation already mentioned that alternates
    should have "two or more JSON data types"; so this also fixes
    the code to enforce that.  However, we have existing uses of a
    union type with only one branch, so the 2-or-more strictness
    is intentionally limited to alternates.
    
    Signed-off-by: default avatarEric Blake <eblake@redhat.com>
    Message-Id: <1455778109-6278-3-git-send-email-eblake@redhat.com>
    Signed-off-by: default avatarMarkus Armbruster <armbru@redhat.com>
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