[dpdk-dev] Proposal for a big eal / ethdev cleanup

[David Marchand]

Jan,

I was waiting for some others feedbacks before going into the code.
Glad to see you already tried this.


On Mon, Jan 18, 2016 at 3:58 PM, Jan Viktorin <viktorin at rehivetech.com> wrote:
> On Thu, 14 Jan 2016 11:38:16 +0100
> David Marchand <david.marchand at 6wind.com> wrote:
>> - no need for a rte_pci_driver reference in rte_pci_device, since we
>> have the rte_device driver
>
> This is an issue, see below.
>
>>
>> - rte_pci_driver is modified to embed a rte_driver
>
> The rte_driver and rte_pci_driver are related in a much different way
> at the moment. The meaning of rte_driver is more like an rte_module in
> the current DPDK.
>
> In fact, we don't have any generic rte_driver suitable for this purpose.
> Thus, the transition to this model needs to rename rte_driver to
> rte_module and to introduce a new data structure named rte_driver.
>
> Quite confusing... but this is how I understand it.

Hum, yes.
Well, looking at current rte_driver, this code has been first thought
as a way to load pmd through dso, so yes, this is more like module
init.
Then the hotplug has been hooked on this, adding to the confusion.


> (What is the current relation between rte_pci_device and rte_pci_driver?
> Is the rte_pci_driver a singleton? I doubt. Well, it cannot be, as it
> is embedded in each eth_driver.)

Not sure I understand the question.

At the moment, a rte_pci_device references a rte_pci_driver.
Associating those happens at pci "probe" time
lib/librte_eal/common/eal_common_pci.c +202

I agree there is a pci_driver embedded in eth_driver, but that does
not mean pci drivers must be eth drivers.


> Another way, not that beautiful... Introduce rte_generic_driver and
> rte_generic_device. (Or rte_gen_driver/rte_gen_device or
> rte_bus_driver/rte_bus_device if you want). This enables to let the
> rte_driver as it is and it avoids a lot of quite terrible transition
> patches that can break everything.
>
>> - no more devinit and devuninit functions in rte_pci_driver, they can
>> be moved as init / uninit functions in rte_driver
>
> The rte_driver has init/uninit already and its semantics seem to be
> module_init and module_uninit.

Ok, so what you propose is something like this ?

- keep rte_driver as it is (init and uninit), I would say the name can
be changed later.
- add rte_bus_driver (idem, not sure it is a good name) in place of
the rte_driver I mentioned in my initial mail.
Rather than have init / uninit, how about attach / detach methods ?


Regards,
-- 
David Marchand