[RFC 0/2] Dynamically extendable device counter support

[Christoph Lameter <cl-vYTEC60ixJUAvxtiuMwx3w@public.gmane.org>]

We currently have issues when we want to expose device counters to the
system because we have statically defined structures that define
these counters. Changing these requires a change in the ABI since
the counter structures are defined in ib_verbs.h.

Moreover it seems that these counter diverge in a device driver
specific way. Counters show up in sysfs that are not supported
by the device driver and that will always be zero.

The patches here change the ABI to avoid hardcoding counter
names to the ABI. Instead of populated counters in structure
predefined in ib_verbs.h we simply return a pointer to an array
of strings describing the pointers supported and an array of
values of these counters. That allows device drives to define
an arbitrary amount of counters as needed. Adding a counter
does not requrie changing ib_verbs.h.

IB device drivers can develop standard semantics for specific
counters that are supported by multiple device drives by using
the same names there. So software can just check if the device
supports a certain counter and then expect the same behavior
of that counter regardless of the device driver.


This patch series modifies the Iwarp device drives to support
the proposed different way of handling things and then provides
a simple sample on how the mlx5 driver could support counters.

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