Re: DPDK namespace

[Panu Matilainen <pmatilai@redhat.com>]

On 04/07/2016 12:18 PM, Thomas Monjalon wrote:
> Thank you everyone for the feedbacks.
>
> 2016-04-05 15:56, Thomas Monjalon:
>> The goal of this email is to get some feedback on how important it is
>> to fix the DPDK namespace.
>
> Everybody agree every symbols must be prefixed. Checking and fixing the
> namespace consistency will be in the roadmap.
>
> It seems most of you agree renaming would be a nice improvement but not
> so important.
> The main drawback is the induced backporting pain, even if we have
> some scripts to convert the patches to the old namespace.
> Note: the backports can be in DPDK itself or in the applications.
>
>> If there is enough agreement that we should do something, I suggest to
>> introduce the "dpdk_" prefix slowly and live with both "rte_" and "dpdk_"
>> during some time.
>> We could start using the new prefix for the new APIs (example: crypto)
>> or when there is a significant API break (example: mempool).
>
> The slow change has been clearly rejected in favor of a complete change
> in one patch.
> The timing was also discussed as it could impact the pending patches.
> So it would be done at the end or the beginning of a release.
> Marc suggests to do it for 16.04 as the numbering scheme has changed.

Just noting that it cannot be done in 16.04 because the ABI policy 
requires a deprecation cycle of at least one major release for every 
breakage. And we're discussing a total 100% breakage of everything here, 
even if its just a simple rename.

	- Panu -

> There is no strong conclusion at this point because we need to decide
> wether the renaming deserves to be done or never.
> I suggest to take the inputs from the technical board.
>
> Do not hesitate to comment. Thanks
>