[dpdk-dev] [PATCH v4 0/5] lib: add Port Representors

[Thomas Monjalon]

Hi,

08/01/2018 15:37, Remy Horton:
> Port Representors provide a logical presentation in DPDK of VF (virtual 
> function) ports for the purposes of control and monitoring. Each port 
> representor device represents a single VF and is associated with it's 
> parent physical function (PF) PMD which provides the back-end hooks for 
> the representor device ops and defines the control domain to which that 
> port belongs. This allows to use existing DPDK APIs to monitor and control 
> the port without the need to create and maintain VF specific APIs.

Extending control plane ability of DPDK has been discussed
multiple times.
The current agreed policy is:
"
The primary goal of DPDK is to provide a userspace dataplane.
Managing VFs from a PF driver is a control plane feature and developers
should generally rely on the Linux Kernel for that.
"
http://dpdk.org/doc/guides/contributing/design.html#pf-and-vf-considerations

If we relax this policy, I think the representor solution should be
a real port, not only "for the purposes of control and monitoring".
It has been asked several times as replies to this series,
but it is kindly ignored, saying it will be thought later.

I don't see a general agreement on this series so far.