Re: rdma-core 12 breaks libibverbs ABI

Jason Gunthorpe
2017-01-27T01:04:52Z

On Thu, Jan 26, 2017 at 11:53:36PM +0000, Hefty, Sean wrote:
> > > There should not be any compat - it's just going to drag down
> > > development and everyone is free to submit their provider to rdma-
> > core,
> > > same as kernel drivers.
> >
> > Agree, I have no desire to support out-of-tree providers.
>
> What is the plan for handling live updates to a single vendor library?
>
> Is the intent that vendors must now (potentially) provide different
> versions of their libraries, based on which libibverbs release is
> deployed by the user?

Well, this has been the case for awhile, at least for certain
providers (eg mlx5 will not link to older libibverbs).

The patch to add IBVERBS_PRIVATE_xx certainly makes it every
provider's problem..

As I see it, anyone doing an update driver distribution will have to
QA it with a certain libibverbs, so I doubt there is much point in
making it too easy for a user to mix and match too widely??

So vendors have a few basic choices:
- Ship libibverbs.rpm with the updated driver and matched libibverbs
This is pretty easy, I probably would recommend this.
- QA the driver with the libibverbs in the various targetted distro
releases, as you suggested
- Ship their fix to the distro and have the distro push the update

It isn't really any different from the problem a vendor would face
getting the kernel driver updated..

Jason