[virt-tools-list] Re: libosinfo - another try

[Daniel P. Berrange]

On Thu, Oct 22, 2009 at 02:52:25PM -0400, Arjun Roy wrote:
> On 10/22/2009 10:52 AM, Daniel P. Berrange wrote:
> >> 2. Informative Attributes
> >> This could refer to things such as name, kernel-type, architecture, or anything
> >> else that would be useful to track. I suspect that it would be alright to limit
> >> the kind of data to strings (kernel : linux) and version numbers 
> >> (kernel-version: 2.6.30).
> >>
> >> In other words, we'd end up with a schema like this:
> >> <distro ID=2>
> >>   <upgrades ID=1 />
> >>   <name type=str>Fedora 11</name>
> >>   <kernel type=str>linux</kernel>
> >>   <kernel-version type=ver>2.6.30</kernel-version>
> >> </distro>
> >
> > I don't think this type=str vs type=ver is really adding anything of
> > value here. You can't rely on projects providing nicely parsable
> > version numbers, so in practice you just end up with version strings
> > instead.
> >
> In which case the problem turns into one of; how do we handle these version
> strings? Do we just provide them as is, or find some way to compare them? Or is
> comparison best left to the user of the API? (That would simplify things for us
> considerably)

If we find we need to compare version numbers, then this means we've failed
to provide sufficient metadata for solving the question directly.

Regards,
Daniel
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