[dpdk-dev] What is the best way to distribute a DPDK-based app?

[Bruce Richardson]

On Sun, Jan 11, 2015 at 07:10:30PM +0200, Vlad Zolotarov wrote:
> Hi,
> guys could you share form your experience what is the best way to distribute
> the DPDK libraries with the DPDK-based app:
> 
>  * Is there any significant benefit in compiling the libraries on a
>    target machine?
>  * Is there an already existing DPDK-libs packaging: I've noticed there
>    is some Fedora RPM package with DPDK libs but it's lacking
>    pmd-driver's libs and they are the main component we are using,
>    therefore we can't use it.
> 
> Thanks in advance,
> vlad
> 
The default in DPDK is to build a statically linked binary, in which case no
separate distribution of libraries is necessary. This also gives best performance.

If you know ahead of time what the minimum cpu hardware of your target is, it's
probably worthwhile doing a compile of your app/libs for that minimum hardware,
especially if you care about getting best performance. If a few percent drop in
performance is not a big issue, then compiling up for the "default" target is
the safest path to take.
For distributing the libs as shared libs, the same logic applies.

/Bruce