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 2024-06-14. (At that
time, the date of the most recent commit that was found in the
repository was 2024-06-07.) If you discover any rendering
problems in this HTML version of the page, or you believe there
is a better or more up-to-date source for the page, or you have
corrections or improvements to the information in this COLOPHON
(which is not part of the original manual page), send a mail to
man-pages@man7.org
Open vSwitch November 2009 ovsdb-idlc(1)