[libvirt] [PATCH 06/11] util: use glib base64 encoding/decoding APIs

[Daniel P. Berrangé]

On Mon, Sep 30, 2019 at 05:24:00PM +0200, Peter Krempa wrote:
> On Mon, Sep 30, 2019 at 16:10:11 +0100, Daniel Berrange wrote:
> > On Mon, Sep 30, 2019 at 05:03:47PM +0200, Peter Krempa wrote:
> > > On Mon, Sep 30, 2019 at 15:53:35 +0100, Daniel Berrange wrote:
> > > > On Mon, Sep 30, 2019 at 04:05:57PM +0200, Andrea Bolognani wrote:
> > > > > On Mon, 2019-09-30 at 13:41 +0100, Daniel P. Berrangé wrote:
> > > > > > On Mon, Sep 30, 2019 at 02:18:17PM +0200, Andrea Bolognani wrote:
> > > > > > > On Mon, 2019-09-30 at 13:56 +0200, Pavel Hrdina wrote:
> 
> [...]
> 
> > > > There's really not any significant real world pain from mixing the
> > > > two styles. It is visually distasteful but doesn't cause any functional
> > > > problems at runtime, nor complexity for maintainers. A large conversion
> > > > over the whole codebase does cause very significant pain in conflicts
> > > > for anyone cherry picking patches. That is just not a net win overall.
> > > > I'll take visually mixed styles any day over creating patch conflicts
> > > > in backports.
> > > 
> > > I don't see how. If the end-goal is to convert everything to the new
> > > form you will get into potential pain/conflicts sooner or later anyways.
> > 
> > If we incrementally convert methods, then when backporting a patch
> > related to that method, we have good chance of being able to cherry-pick
> > the small conversion patch. If we bulk convert entire file at a time,
> > across the whole codebase, attempting to cherry-pick the conversion patches
> > will have much higher conflict liklihood.
> 
> I doubt that there will be any motivation to start a incremental
> coversion. While when adding VIR_AUTOFREE and coverting to it there was
> a clear benefit of simplification in doing so, converting from
> VIR_AUTOFREE to g_autofree has exactly 0 benefit.

The motivation for conversion is something under our direct control
as reviewers. eg we could define a coding style rule that any function
which makes a call to any glib API (ie a g_XXX prefix) must be converted
as a prior step. 

> > > Or the other option is to leave it as a half-done lingering refactor and
> > > that doesn't help either.
> > 
> > It don't be in a half-done state forever. We can let things be converted
> > incrementally over the next 3-6 months. At the end of say 6 months if
> > anything is left we bulk convert it them. That gets the benefits opf
> > incremental work without downside of stuff remaining unconverted forever.
> 
> How is this not a big-bang conversion?

Most of the conversion patches will be small & targetted. Obviously it
assumes that 95% of the stuff gets converted this way during the first
period. So the final conversion  at the end is quite small.

Regards,
Daniel
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