Re: [Qemu-devel] [PATCH v2] qemu: replace "" with <> in headers

[Daniel P . Berrangé]

On Wed, Mar 21, 2018 at 04:46:32PM +0200, Michael S. Tsirkin wrote:
> Our current scheme is to use
>  #include ""
> for internal headers, and
>  #include <>
> for external ones.
> 
> Unfortunately this is not based on compiler support: from C point of
> view, the "" form merely looks up headers in the current directory
> and then falls back on <> directories.
> 
> Thus, for example, a system header trace.h - should it be present - will
> conflict with our local trace.h

If our local "trace.h" is in the current directory, then using ""
is right and you can still use <trace.h> to get the system version.

If our local trace.h is in include/ top level, then it is going to
block use of the system trace.h regardless of whether we use <> or ""

Fortunately our include/ tree uses sub-dirs, so we would typically
use  #include "$subdir/trace.h" and  #include <trace.h> would still
find the system header.

We just have to be careful we don't add stuff at the top level of
our include/ dir with names that are liable to clash. This might
suggest renaming  include/elf.h to include/qemu/elf.h, or just
moving elf.h to the qemu/ subdirectory. Likewise include/glib-compat.h
might be better moved to qemu/ subdirectory.


> As another example of problems, a header by the same name in the source
> directory will always be picked up first - before any headers in
> the include directory.

There's only a couple of headers in the top level of our include/
directory - everything else is pulled in with a named path
eg #include "block/block_int.h", so that would not conflict with
reference to a bare #include "block_int.h" from the current directory.

> Let's change the scheme: make sure all headers that are not
> in the source directory are included through a path
> starting with qemu/ , thus:
> 
>  #include <>
> 
> headers in the same directory as source are included with
> 
>  #include ""
> 
> as per standard.

As stated before, I consider this a step backwards - it is a
good clear standard to use "" for project local includes and
<> for 3rd party / system includes IMHO. The change doesn't
do anything beneficial for the two scenarios described above
AFAICT.


Regards,
Daniel
-- 
|: https://berrange.com      -o-    https://www.flickr.com/photos/dberrange :|
|: https://libvirt.org         -o-            https://fstop138.berrange.com :|
|: https://entangle-photo.org    -o-    https://www.instagram.com/dberrange :|