[dpdk-dev] NXP DPAA2: Symbol renaming issue: Request for Suggestions

[Thomas Monjalon]

2017-01-24 14:39, Shreyansh Jain:
> You might have noticed that we have exposed a lot of symbols from
> drivers/common and drivers/bus for drivers/net and drivers/crypto. All these 
> symbols are not rte_* as what has been suggested for exported symbols.
> 
> Review comments have been received for renaming these to make them rte_* or
> _rte_* prefixed.
> 
> Just as a side note, these symbols are being exposed _internally_ within
> drivers/* area. 
> 
> There are (3) possible solutions we have:
> 
> 1/ Rename all the symbols:
>   - This is a difficult option for us. Renaming means breaking our linkage
>     with existing code (Linux Kernel upstream candidate as well as internal
>     repository).
>   - Changing it means maintaining this change set internally/independently
>     which is not a feasible long term solution.

I don't understand the problem.
You can have a DPDK layer which rename functions and structs.

> 2/ Merge all the libraries together:
>   - In the initial RFC days, there were review comments which suggested that
>     we should break the PMD into common libraries and place it in drivers/*
>     parallel folders.
>   - This is precisely the reason we are facing the situation.
>   - Another possibility is to start duplicating the code for common. But, this
>     too has a technical limitation for us as some data structures are shared
>     across net and crypto and it is not possible to have multiple instances of
>     those.
>   - One more offshoot option could have been to keep the library external
>     of the DPDK framework (external location and linked on demand basis,
>     manually). We don't prefer this as this will make it difficult for any user
>     to use DPAA2 easily.

Yes, it was my first comment. If this layer is common with other projects,
why not maintaining it as a standalone library?

> 3/ Finding a way to keep symbols internal to drivers/* independent of rte_*
>    prefix:
>    - For example, allowing symbols to be exposed limited to drivers/* area
>      and not allowing them to be available across lib/* (not sure how, though!)
>    
>    <This is where I need you help - is there some suggestion or comments which
>     can help us arrive to a solution?>

There is currently no difference between API symbols and inter-libs symbols.

>    My argument for this:
>   - With new bus infra in place, there would be more drivers being contributed.
>     It also means that there would be PMDs having their own code and symbol
>     models. It would be difficult to ask all of them to mandatorily adhere
>     to a naming scheme.
>     This argument bodes well for lib/* because that is core (libraries) which
>     should be controlled for uniformity and performance.

I think it is acceptable to have some DPAA2-specific symbols with their own
namespace.