Re: [RFC PATCH 0/9] ethtool netlink interface (WiP)

[Jiri Pirko <jiri@resnulli.us>]

Mon, Dec 11, 2017 at 06:01:44PM CET, davem@davemloft.net wrote:
>From: Jiri Pirko <jiri@resnulli.us>
>Date: Mon, 11 Dec 2017 17:32:46 +0100
>
>> I think that it does not make sense to convert ethtool->netlink_ethtool
>> 1:1 feature wise. Now we have devlink, ritch switch representation
>> model, tc offload and many others. Lot of things that are in
>> ethtool, should be done in devlink. Also, there are couple of things
>> that should just die - nice example is ethtool --config-ntuple - we
>> should use tc for that.
>
>Whilst I do agree that devlink is probably a good place for this stuff
>(we want to be able to do ethetool things on objects that lack a netdev)
>I do not agree with the tc angle.
>
>It is entirely appropriate to set the ntuple settings of a driver
>without being required to use TC or similar.
>
>All you are going to do with your suggestion is make people keep using
>the existing ethtool ioctl, because they'll say "screw this, I'm not
>using TC I have something which works just fine already".  And that's
>not the goal of putting this stuff into netlink, we want people to
>use the new facilities and move off of the ioctl.

Sure, but this is a great opportunity to avoid copying old mistakes.
That is why I suggested to do it not 1:1 but rather introduce brand new
netlink-based interface that would not carry old baggage.