[PATCH] doc: announce removal of flow director

[PATCH] doc: announce removal of flow director

[Stephen Hemminger]

There are still leftover bits in ethdev related to flow director (fdir).
Will be removing these in 26.11 so give final notice.

Signed-off-by: Stephen Hemminger <stephen@networkplumber.org>
---
 doc/guides/rel_notes/deprecation.rst | 8 ++++++++
 1 file changed, 8 insertions(+)

diff --git a/doc/guides/rel_notes/deprecation.rst b/doc/guides/rel_notes/deprecation.rst
index 17f90a6352..f9f1d97f78 100644
--- a/doc/guides/rel_notes/deprecation.rst
+++ b/doc/guides/rel_notes/deprecation.rst
@@ -158,3 +158,11 @@ Deprecation Notices
 * net/iavf: The dynamic mbuf field used to detect LLDP packets on the
   transmit path in the iavf PMD will be removed in a future release.
   After removal, only packet type-based detection will be supported.
+
+* ethdev: The legacy filtering data structures in ``rte_eth_ctrl.h``,
+  including the flow director (FDIR) types (``rte_eth_fdir_*``, ``rte_fdir_*``)
+  and the ntuple/ethertype/SYN/tunnel/input-set filter types, are superseded
+  by the ``rte_flow`` API and will be removed in DPDK 26.11. The associated
+  driver-facing definitions in ``ethdev_driver.h`` (``RTE_ETH_FILTER_FDIR``,
+  ``struct rte_eth_fdir_conf``, ``enum rte_eth_fdir_pballoc_type``,
+  ``enum rte_fdir_status_mode``) will be removed at the same time.
-- 
2.53.0

Re: [PATCH] doc: announce removal of flow director

[Thomas Monjalon]

28/05/2026 19:00, Stephen Hemminger:
> There are still leftover bits in ethdev related to flow director (fdir).
> Will be removing these in 26.11 so give final notice.
> 
> Signed-off-by: Stephen Hemminger <stephen@networkplumber.org>
> ---
> +* ethdev: The legacy filtering data structures in ``rte_eth_ctrl.h``,
> +  including the flow director (FDIR) types (``rte_eth_fdir_*``, ``rte_fdir_*``)
> +  and the ntuple/ethertype/SYN/tunnel/input-set filter types, are superseded
> +  by the ``rte_flow`` API and will be removed in DPDK 26.11. The associated
> +  driver-facing definitions in ``ethdev_driver.h`` (``RTE_ETH_FILTER_FDIR``,
> +  ``struct rte_eth_fdir_conf``, ``enum rte_eth_fdir_pballoc_type``,
> +  ``enum rte_fdir_status_mode``) will be removed at the same time.

The problem is that some drivers rely on these structures for rte_flow.

Note: this file is big, please keep it sorted by moving this
close to other ethdev and flow deprecations.

Re: [PATCH] doc: announce removal of flow director

[Stephen Hemminger]

On Thu, 28 May 2026 20:19:15 +0200
Thomas Monjalon <thomas@monjalon.net> wrote:

> 28/05/2026 19:00, Stephen Hemminger:
> > There are still leftover bits in ethdev related to flow director (fdir).
> > Will be removing these in 26.11 so give final notice.
> > 
> > Signed-off-by: Stephen Hemminger <stephen@networkplumber.org>
> > ---
> > +* ethdev: The legacy filtering data structures in ``rte_eth_ctrl.h``,
> > +  including the flow director (FDIR) types (``rte_eth_fdir_*``, ``rte_fdir_*``)
> > +  and the ntuple/ethertype/SYN/tunnel/input-set filter types, are superseded
> > +  by the ``rte_flow`` API and will be removed in DPDK 26.11. The associated
> > +  driver-facing definitions in ``ethdev_driver.h`` (``RTE_ETH_FILTER_FDIR``,
> > +  ``struct rte_eth_fdir_conf``, ``enum rte_eth_fdir_pballoc_type``,
> > +  ``enum rte_fdir_status_mode``) will be removed at the same time.  
> 
> The problem is that some drivers rely on these structures for rte_flow.
> 
> Note: this file is big, please keep it sorted by moving this
> close to other ethdev and flow deprecations.

There are three cases of drivers using fdir:
 - simple ones which are just borrowing things like rte_filter_type
   addressing these is trivial; mostly just keep rte_filter_type for now
 - Intel ones like i40e and ixgbe which still expose fdir api's.
   Can deprecate the PMD API's and move the fdir structures into intel commonc code.
 - drivers where fdir was used in variable names but never really used the infrastructure.

Will have proposed patches in a few days.