The ovsdb-idlc program is a command-line tool for translating Open
vSwitch database interface definition language (IDL) schemas into
other formats. It is used while building Open vSwitch, not at
installation or configuration time. Thus, it is not normally
installed as part of Open vSwitch.
The idl files used as input for most ovsdb-idlc commands have the
same format as the OVSDB schemas, specified in the OVSDB
specification, with a few additions:
"idlPrefix" member of <database-schema>
This member, which is required, specifies a string that is
prefixed to top-level names in C bindings. It should probably
end in an underscore.
"idlHeader" member of <database-schema>
This member, which is required, specifies the name of the IDL
header. It will be output on an #include line in the source
file generated by the C bindings. It should include the
bracketing "" or <>.
"cDecls" member of <database-schema>
"hDecls" member of <database-schema>
These optional members may specify arbitrary code to include
in the generated .c or .h file, respectively, in each case
just after the #include directives in those files.
"extensions" member of <table-schema>
"extensions" member of <column-schema>
This member is optional. If specified, it is an object whose
contents describes extensions to the OVSDB schema language,
for the purpose of specifying interpretation by the IDL.
"synthetic" member of <column-schema> "extensions" object
If this optional member is set to true, then it indicates that
the column is not expected to be found in the actual database.
Instead, code supplied by the IDL's client fills in the
desired structure members based on the value of one or more
other database columns. This can be used to cache the result
of a calculation, for example.
"parse" member of <column-schema> "extensions" object
This member should be present if and only if the column is
synthetic. It should be a string that contains C code to set
the value of the column's member in an object named row, e.g.
"row->column = 1;" if the column's name is column and has
integer type. The code may rely on the columns named in
dependencies to be initialized. The function can get called
for rows that do not satisfy the constraints in the schema,
e.g. that a pointer to another is nonnull, so it must not rely
on those constraints.
"unparse" member of <column-schema> "extensions" object
This member is honored only if the column is synthetic. It
should be a string that contains C code to free the data in
the column's member in an object named row, e.g.
"free(row->column);" if the column's name is column and points
to data that was allocated by the parse function and needs to
be freed.
"dependencies" member of <column-schema> "extensions" object
This member should be a list of the names of columns whose
values are used by the code in parse and unparse. The IDL
ensures that dependencies are parsed before the columns that
depends on them, and vice versa for unparsing.
Commandsannotate schema annotations
Reads schema, which should be a file in JSON format
(ordinarily an OVSDB schema file), then reads and executes the
Python syntax fragment in annotations. The Python syntax
fragment is passed the JSON object as a local variable named
s. It may modify this data in any way. After the Python code
returns, the object as modified is re-serialized as JSON on
standard output.
c-idl-header idl
Reads idl and prints on standard output a C header file that
defines a structure for each table defined by the schema. If
a column name in idl is a C or C++ keyword, it will be
appended with an underscore.
c-idl-source idl
Reads idl and prints on standard output a C source file that
implements C bindings for the database defined by the schema.
If a column name in idl is a C or C++ keyword, it will be
appended with an underscore.
Options
This page is part of the Open vSwitch (a distributed virtual
multilayer switch) project. Information about the project can be
found at ⟨http://openvswitch.org/⟩. If you have a bug report for
this manual page, send it to bugs@openvswitch.org. This page was
obtained from the project's upstream Git repository
⟨https://github.com/openvswitch/ovs.git⟩ on 2020-08-13. (At that
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Open vSwitch November 2009 ovsdb-idlc(1)