Re: KNI Questions

[John Fastabend <john.fastabend@gmail.com>]

On 16-12-15 09:16 AM, Stephen Hemminger wrote:
> On Thu, 15 Dec 2016 11:53:59 +0000
> Ferruh Yigit <ferruh.yigit@intel.com> wrote:
> 
>> Hi Stephen,
>>
>> <...>
>>
>>>
>>> Which raises a couple of questions:
>>>  1. Why is DPDK still keeping KNI support for Intel specific ethtool functionality.
>>>     This always breaks, is code bloat, and means a 3rd copy of base code (Linux, DPDK PMD, + KNI)  
>>
>> I agree on you comments related to the ethtool functionality,
>> but right now that is a functionality that people may be using, I think
>> we should not remove it without providing an alternative to it.
>>
>>>
>>>  2. Why is KNI not upstream?
>>>     If not acceptable due to security or supportablity then why does it still exist?  
>>
>> I believe you are one of the most knowledgeable person in the mail list
>> on upstreaming, any support is welcome.
> 
> It should be upstreamable but I doubt it would make it past the maintainer.
> Mostly because it supports DPDK which he is not in favor of but also since
> it is a specialized interface only usable by DPDK, ie. not a general infrastructure.
> 

I was looking to see if we could get more or less the same interface put
in either af_packet or vhost directly. It would work nicely with the XDP
patches where we want to forward a packet into userspace without having
to build skb, etc. So it wouldn't be _just_ a DPDK interface at that
point.

I was hoping to look into it in Jan/Feb I need to wrap a few other
things up first.

.John