[dpdk-dev] [PATCH v9 00/25] Introducing rte_driver/rte_device generalization

[Stephen Hemminger]

On Thu, 8 Sep 2016 12:40:08 +0530
Shreyansh Jain <shreyansh.jain at nxp.com> wrote:

> > Overall I like to see the clean separation.
> > Are you sure you removed as much as possible from PCI?  
> 
> I am not very sure of what you mean.
> 
> If you are referring to whether all PCI PMDs have been taken care of, I 
> think they are. Only issue being I can't test all of them functionally. 
> I have some steps provided by Thomas which can help me compile test these.
> 
> Or, if you are referring to whether PCI drivers have been completely 
> disconnected from existing EAL (and converted to above linkage), I think 
> yes.
> 
> Key change that still remains is delinking eth_driver from PCI type and 
> using a more generic approach where eth_driver (or rte_eth_driver, after 
> name change) can be of any type - PCI, Virtual, SoC etc.
> 
> > I wonder of global PCI device list is needed at all if you now have list of all devices.
> >  
> 
> I think yes. There are separate lists for all device types which helps 
> keep the EAL code free of type checks. But, functionally it doesn't make 
> that big a different between a common or specific list.
> I am in favor of separate lists of each rte_xxx_device/driver type - 
> other than a global list (which is not actually being used, for now).

I was just concerned that doing bookkeeping on multiple lists creates more possibilities
for bugs where error unwind paths don't match.