[dpdk-dev] [PATCHv4 5/5] doc: Add ABI __experimental tag documentation

[Thomas Monjalon]

14/01/2018 15:36, Neil Horman:
> On Sat, Jan 13, 2018 at 04:56:11PM +0100, Thomas Monjalon wrote:
> > 13/01/2018 01:28, Neil Horman:
> > > On Fri, Jan 12, 2018 at 03:55:10PM +0000, Ferruh Yigit wrote:
> > > > After this point agree to using EXPERIMENTAL tag in the version map as standard,
> > > > but it will be hard to maintain "API is experimental for first release" without
> > > > help of any automated tool.
> > > > 
> > > I completely agree, in fact I would say it is impossible to do without tooling,
> > > with or without this change.  I think we need to do 1 of 2 things:
> > > 
> > > 1) Add some code to checkpatch.pl to put up a warning if any new apis are added
> > > without marking them as experimental
> > > 
> > > 2) Change the documentation to be a suggestion rather than a requirement.
> > > 
> > > I'll look into doing (1), but I'm wondering if (2) is the more flexible way to
> > > go. I'm hesitant to enforce the initial marking of new APIs as experimental.
> > > Thoughts?
> > 
> > There will be always cases where we are sure that the experimental step
> > is not needed.
> > Even if it is required and checked by a tool, we can ignore it, right?
> > However, there is no big benefit of bypassing the experimental step.
> > 
> > I am for making mandatory the new API as experimental.
> > We will handle the exceptions case by case if any.
> > 
> If the consensus is to require experimental marking by default, and grant
> exceptions as needed, then I would strongly suggest that we do this in
> checkpatch as I can modify it to warn people of added API's (which will be
> reflected in the CI tool, if the CI group is still maintaining it), but we can
> collectively ignore it if its so clearly trivial that it requires no
> experimental addition (which I think may freqently be the case).

I am OK with this approach.

> I'll start work on that on monday

Good

I wonder how difficult it can be to implement.
Note: we do not maintain a fork of checkpatch.pl.
We just have a shell wrapper checkpatch.sh.

Maybe you should start a different tool.
Can it use Coccinelle?