On 5/15/25 10:42, Kirill Shchetiniuk via Devel wrote: > Hello everyone, > > Sometime ago I sent a patch changing the XML schema to add GTK support for > libvirt. As the type for one path argument, I used the <text/> type, simply > copying the similar approach from another place in the XML schema definition. > I was told that it's not the best way to use the <text/> type for paths and > that absFilePath, a defined basic type for paths, should be used instead. > > After this, I decided to fix this in a place where I had seen the same > approach, too. After further investigation, I found a lot more places where > the <text/> type is used for paths. Moreover, I found out that we have at > least 4 type definitions for paths (files and directories). Some of these > types accept simply everything, others paths starting with "/" or even > Windows-style disk names.
Preface: libxml2 error reporting is horrible. At least wrt schema validation. It gives a binary result effectively: XML is valid, XML is not valid (and good luck figuring out why). > > <define name="filePath"> > <data type="string"> > <param name="pattern">.+</param> > </data> > </define> > > <define name="dirPath"> > <data type="string"> > <param name="pattern">.+</param> > </data> > </define> > These two ^^ should be merged into one IMO. Users will never get an error (from libxml2): "filePath expected, found dirPath" or vice versa. > <define name="absFilePath"> > <data type="string"> > <param name="pattern">(/|[a-zA-Z]:\\).+</param> > </data> > </define> > > <define name="absDirPath"> > <data type="string"> > <param name="pattern">/.*</param> > </data> > </define> This one is a bit tricky, because one accepts Windows style of paths (C:\someDir) the other doesn't. Initially, both were the same and the former was changed in v6.10.0-rc1~25 so we do want to accept Windows style of paths too. But then again, I don't see any value in having two separate rules. > > According to this, I have the following questions: > > 1. Do we allow users to use relative paths, or MUST all paths be absolute? I think we must keep relative paths, because we once allowed them. > > 2. Do we have to accept Windows-style paths everywhere? > > 3. Do we need to have different types for directories? For example, in some > places, the filePath type is used for directory parameters. > > And as a last question, do we want to unify the basic types related to paths > to maintain the schemas more consistent? What you could do is to define "relativePath" data type that would accept ".+" and then "absolutePath" that would be effectively the same as "absFilePath". Michal
