Re: [patch net-next v2 8/9] switchdev: introduce Netlink API

[Florian Fainelli <f.fainelli@gmail.com>]

On 09/19/14 15:12, John Fastabend wrote:
> On 09/19/2014 10:57 AM, Jamal Hadi Salim wrote:
>> On 09/19/14 11:49, Jiri Pirko wrote:
>>> Fri, Sep 19, 2014 at 05:25:48PM CEST, jhs@mojatatu.com wrote:
>>
>>>> Is this just a temporary test tool? Otherwise i dont see reason
>>>> for its existence (or the API that it feeds on).
>>>
>>> Please read the conversation I had with Pravin and Jesse in v1 thread.
>>> Long story short they like to have the api separated from ovs datapath
>>> so ovs daemon can use it to directly communicate with driver. Also John
>>> Fastabend requested a way to work with driver flows without using ovs ->
>>> that was the original reason I created switchdev genl api.
>>>
>>> Regarding the "sw" tool, yes it is for testing purposes now. ovs daemon
>>> will use directly switchdev genl api.
>>>
>>> I hope I cleared this out.
>>>
>>
>> It is - thanks Jiri.
>>
>> cheers,
>> jamal
>
> Hi Jiri,
>
> I was considering a slightly different approach where the
> device would report via netlink the fields/actions it
> supported rather than creating pre-defined enums for every
> possible key.
>
> I already need to have an API to report fields/matches
> that are being supported why not have the device report
> the headers as header fields (len, offset) and the
> associated parse graph the hardware uses? Vendors should
> have this already to describe/design their real hardware.

Humm would not that slightly go against coming with a netlink API that 
is generic? Surely we could pay close attention when reviewing what is 
being added and spot when a common API needs to be introduced...

This might become very similar to the private ioctl(), private wireless 
extensions, nl80211 testmode and well it's not extremely pretty.

>
> As always its better to have code and when I get some
> time I'll try to write it up. Maybe its just a separate
> classifier although I don't actually want two hardware
> flow APIs.
>
> I see you dropped the RFC tag are you proposing we include
> this now?
>
> .John
>