From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Stephen Hemminger Subject: Re: [RFC] bridge and friends: reduce TheLinuxWay(tm) Date: Mon, 14 Oct 2013 14:41:56 -0700 Message-ID: <20131014144156.6dc52a78@nehalam.linuxnetplumber.net> References: <525C62D5.3090004@mojatatu.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Cc: Stephen Hemminger , Vlad Yasevich , "netdev@vger.kernel.org" To: Jamal Hadi Salim Return-path: Received: from mail-pb0-f51.google.com ([209.85.160.51]:42980 "EHLO mail-pb0-f51.google.com" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1753884Ab3JNVmA (ORCPT ); Mon, 14 Oct 2013 17:42:00 -0400 Received: by mail-pb0-f51.google.com with SMTP id jt11so7916251pbb.10 for ; Mon, 14 Oct 2013 14:41:59 -0700 (PDT) In-Reply-To: <525C62D5.3090004@mojatatu.com> Sender: netdev-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: On Mon, 14 Oct 2013 17:32:05 -0400 Jamal Hadi Salim wrote: > IOW, TheCutNpasteTrain. > > There's a lot of clutter on the netlink interface used > by bridge and vxlan. > 1) A lot of things which are boolean on/off end up using a uchar. > Example: > IFLA_BRPORT_MODE, IFLA_BRPORT_GUARD, IFLA_BRPORT_PROTECT, > IFLA_BRPORT_LEARNING, IFLA_BRPORT_UNICAST_FLOOD, BRIDGE_VLAN_INFO_PVID, > BRIDGE_VLAN_INFO_UNTAGGED, BRIDGE_MODE_VEPA, > IFLA_VXLAN_PROXY,IFLA_VXLAN_RSC, etc > > 2) There's a few fields which are basically intended to project the > same message to the kernel but are redefined a few times: > Example: > BRIDGE_VLAN_INFO_MASTER vs NTF_MASTER vs BRIDGE_FLAGS_MASTER > > Also i am not sure why multicast snooping needs its own subheader. > > Is it too late to make changes? git logs shows some of these feature > have only been on the last 2-3 months. > One approach to resolve this is introduce a new BRIDGE_FLAGS TLV > which will work like the ifi_flags/change and put all these flags in > one spot. New iproute will use these and the old one will continue using > the old approach. It would require to EOL the old interface at some > point. Unfortunately, by now this is all set in ABI. It was a side effect of the per-feature evolutionary style of development.