Hi,
let me do some high level user oriented review of new storage API.
At first I think it is good that design decisions are documented, which
is nice. Also having goals and requirements is documented which is fine
to understand some decisions. What I miss is all requirements, I think
it would be nice to write down all features old libstorage have and
maybe discuss if it still make sense in new libstorage.
Now first note. I do not see in decisions why C++ is used as language
for this library. I think it would be nice to document it why it is
needed as currently from document I see that planned users are machinery
( which use ruby ), Yast (ruby) and kiwi (perl). Is there any
performance reasons, availability of bindings, libraries or any other
reason to use it? As libstorage basically use CLI of other programs, so
question is why not use more high level language.
Now lets move to examples. From my user POV there is some confusing API
calls and parameters. For example lets use find1.cc as example which I
comment (I can do this for all examples).
// creating some global storage is fine
Devicegraph* devicegraph = new Devicegraph();
// this looks strange for me
// 1) how disk can be created? I expect disk is detected or proposed
// 2) why saying that disk have "/dev/sda" what if I am on qemu which
// have "/dev/vda"?
Disk* sda = Disk::create(devicegraph, "/dev/sda");
// this looks fine for me, creating partition table on disk
PartitionTable* gpt = sda->create_partition_table(PtType::GPT);
// here I do not get why I need to pass "/dev/sda1" ? Let me say it
// this way, if I have generic code that generate partition for passed
// partition table how I can know if it is hda, sda or vda? and why
// I need to know number of partition? cannot it by default create next
// available one and pass number as optional parameter?
gpt->create_partition("/dev/sda1", PRIMARY);
Partition* sda2 = gpt->create_partition("/dev/sda2", PRIMARY);
// here I create top level container, looks fine for me
LvmVg* system = LvmVg::create(devicegraph, "/dev/system");
// this is very confusing, why I need devicegraph here? Why exposing it
// to user? From doc I know that both sda2 and system have reference to
// it so why it need to be passed?
// And also why it need User::create? Why it is not simple
// `system.add(sda2)` call which is more intuitive for me?
User::create(devicegraph, sda2, system);
// in general it looks fine for me, just is there reason to pass
// whole device name? who not having thing like
// `system->create_lvm_lv("root")`
LvmLv* system_root = system->create_lvm_lv("/dev/system/root");
// creation of filesystem, intuitive and easy
Filesystem* filesystem = system_root->create_filesystem(EXT4);
// quite confusing, what is adding mountpoint to filesystem?
// filesystem do not know about mount points, I expect something like
// `devicegraph.mountpoint.add("/", filesystem)`
filesystem->add_mountpoint("/");
// some debug output, nothing to comment, not sure if it is needed to
// be public methods
cout << "num_devices: " << devicegraph->num_devices()<< endl;
cout << "num_holders: " << devicegraph->num_holders() << endl;
cout << endl;
// validation of storage, easy and intuitive... does it raise exception
// if failed?
devicegraph->check();
// printing of object, fine and intuitive C++ code
cout << devicegraph << endl;
// printing graphiz image, easy and intuitive API call
devicegraph->write_graphviz("test1.gv");
// looking for all filesystems that are mounted as root mountpoint
// is confusing. why it do not return single filesystem?
for (const Filesystem* filesystem : Filesystem::find_by_mountpoint(devicegraph, "/")) {
// I am not sure if I can imagine what is ancestor of filesystem?
// I hope there is better name for it
// second note is boolean parameter, it is really hard to read it and
// hard to remember what such parameter mean. see e.g
//http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/147977/is-it-wrong-to-use-a-b...
for (const Device* device : filesystem->get_ancestors(false)) {
// this a bit break polymophysm, but it is explained in design
// document, so fine for me
if (dynamic_cast