The link status of i40e port remains unchanged regardless of connecting/disconnecting the physical cable. Starting testpmd with default interrupt mode. testpmd> show port info all ... Link status: down ... Packet generator shows link up but i40e link status change interrupt is not activated. If the link is up initially, disconnecting the cable will have no effect on link status as well.
Sent patch to fix and merged. https://dpdk.org/dev/patchwork/patch/40512/
Verified the patch and the patch is merged in 18.05 release. It fixed the issue.