Re: [patch net-next RFC 00/12] devlink: introduce port flavours and common phys_port_name generation

[David Ahern <dsahern@gmail.com>]

On 3/22/18 11:49 AM, Jiri Pirko wrote:
> Thu, Mar 22, 2018 at 04:34:07PM CET, dsahern@gmail.com wrote:
>> On 3/22/18 4:55 AM, Jiri Pirko wrote:
>>> From: Jiri Pirko <jiri@mellanox.com>
>>>
>>> This patchset resolves 2 issues we have right now:
>>> 1) There are many netdevices / ports in the system, for port, pf, vf
>>>    represenatation but the user has no way to see which is which
>>> 2) The ndo_get_phys_port_name is implemented in each driver separatelly,
>>>    which may lead to inconsistent names between drivers.
>>
>> Similar to ndo_get_phys_port_{name,id}, devlink requires drivers to opt
>> in with an implementation right, so you can't really force a solution to
>> the consistent naming.
> 
> Yeah, drivers would still have free choice to implemen the ndo
> themselves. But most of them, like all sriov switch drivers should use
> the devlink helper to have consistent naming. In other words, devlink
> helper should be the standard way, in weird cases (like rocker), driver
> implements it himself.

That's an assumption that somehow the devlink API will be better
supported than ndo_get_phys_port_{name,id}. Don't get me wrong -- an API
to show the kind of device is needed, but I do not think this enforces
any kind of consistency in naming.

> 
> 
>>
>>>
>>> This patchset introduces port flavours which should address the first
>>> problem. I'm testing this with Netronome nfp hardware. When the user
>>> has 2 physical ports, 1 pf, and 4 vfs, he should see something like this:
>>> # devlink port
>>> pci/0000:05:00.0/0: type eth netdev enp5s0np0 flavour physical number 0
>>> pci/0000:05:00.0/268435456: type eth netdev eth0 flavour physical number 0
>>> pci/0000:05:00.0/268435460: type eth netdev enp5s0np1 flavour physical number 1
>>> pci/0000:05:00.0/536875008: type eth netdev eth2 flavour pf_rep number 536875008
>>> pci/0000:05:00.0/536870912: type eth netdev eth1 flavour vf_rep number 0
>>> pci/0000:05:00.0/536870976: type eth netdev eth3 flavour vf_rep number 1
>>> pci/0000:05:00.0/536871040: type eth netdev eth4 flavour vf_rep number 2
>>> pci/0000:05:00.0/536871104: type eth netdev eth5 flavour vf_rep number 3
>>
>> How about 'kind' instead of flavo{u}r?
> 
> Yeah, kind is often used in kernel already with different meaning
> git grep kind net/core
> I wanted to avoid confusions

Roopa's amendment works as well; I just think flavor / flavour is the
wrong word. Make me thinks of food ... ice cream vs netdevices.