[dpdk-dev] DPDK and HW offloads

[Jay Rolette]

On Tue, Mar 22, 2016 at 5:19 AM, Bruce Richardson <
bruce.richardson at intel.com> wrote:

> On Tue, Mar 22, 2016 at 05:50:28AM +0000, Qiu, Michael wrote:
> >
> > Why not to implement one simple API with variable arguments, just like
> > syscall ioctl() does. And drivers implement it's specific hardware
> > features with a feature bit param, and other needed variable arguments.
> >
> > Thanks,
> > Michael
>
> A very much dislike that idea.
> * It makes the code much harder to read as you have to closely examine all
> the
>   parameters to work out what a function call is actually meant to do.
> * It makes it much harder to see that you have an implicit dependency on a
>   specific device. Having to include a driver specific header file e.g.
> i40e.h,
>   and call a function named e.g. i40e_do_magic_stuff(), makes it pretty
> explicit
>   that you have a dependency on i40e-based hardware
> * It prevents the compiler from doing type-checking on parameters and
> informing
>   you of little inconsistencies.
>
> For all these reasons, I prefer the device-specific functions option.
> However,
> at the same time, we also need to ensure we have a reasonable set of
> generic
> APIs so that the cases where users are forced to drop down to the
> lower-level
> device-specific primitives are reduced.
>

+1

Jay