Re: [Ksummit-discuss] [TOPIC] userspace infrastructure services

[Christoph Hellwig <hch@infradead.org>]

On Wed, Aug 12, 2015 at 11:15:52AM -0700, Stephen Hemminger wrote:
> I expected someone else to bring this topic up...
> 
> One thing that is happening is that there is lots of activity in moving core features
> of the kernel into userspace (networking, storage, security). I don't want to get into
> an argument over whether that is good or bad;

Which I think is the most important question of them all.  From all
the pain caused and the little gains I'm a believer it's mostly bad,
especially for cases like:

> The area I am most familiar with is the DPDK which has to have its own UIO drivers
> to work in all environments (get device into userspace). And then has to have its
> own drivers to simulate network device (put device back into kernel).  This leads
> to unmanageable ABI and development technical debt.

Which interacts on both sides.  In that case "let them suffer for their
stupidity" is the only valid answer.

For a case where it's more reasonable there might be a different answer.