Re: Handling multiple inheritance [for CXL]

[Daniel P . Berrangé]

On Tue, Jan 26, 2021 at 01:33:52PM -0800, Ben Widawsky wrote:
> I'm working on CXL 2.0 type 3 memory devices [1]. In short, these are PCIe 
> devices
> that have persistent memory on them. As such, it would be nice to inherit from
> both a PCI_DEVICE class as well as an NVDIMM device class.
> 
> Truth be told, using TYPE_MEMORY_DEVICE as the interface does provide most of
> what I need. I'm wondering what the best way to handle this is. Currently, the
> only thing NVDIMM class provides is write/read_label_data, this is driven by
> _DSM. For CXL, the mechanism to read/write the equivalent area is not done via
> _DSM, but done directly via a mailbox interface. However, the intent is the
> same, and so utilizing similar code seems ideal.
> 
> If there's a desire to unify these code paths, I'd need something like 
> multiple
> inheritance. I'm looking for some feedback here on how to do it.

We don't have a direct concept of multiple inheritance in QOM.

The closest you can get is to turn the NVDIMM class into an
interface. You can inherit from PCI_DEVICE and then implement
the NVDIMM interface.

Regards,
Daniel
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