From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Jamal Hadi Salim Subject: [RFC] bridge and friends: reduce TheLinuxWay(tm) Date: Mon, 14 Oct 2013 17:32:05 -0400 Message-ID: <525C62D5.3090004@mojatatu.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Cc: Vlad Yasevich , "netdev@vger.kernel.org" To: Stephen Hemminger Return-path: Received: from mail-qe0-f43.google.com ([209.85.128.43]:41565 "EHLO mail-qe0-f43.google.com" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1754984Ab3JNVcJ (ORCPT ); Mon, 14 Oct 2013 17:32:09 -0400 Received: by mail-qe0-f43.google.com with SMTP id nc12so5701779qeb.30 for ; Mon, 14 Oct 2013 14:32:09 -0700 (PDT) Sender: netdev-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: 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. If this is agreeable and it is not on someone todo list - I will send patches later on. cheers, jamal