Interesting unused file in repo with bridging trace

[Christophe Fontaine]

> On 15 Sep 2025, at 08:17, Andrew Rybchenko <Andrew.Rybchenko at oktetlabs.ru> wrote:
> 
> Hi,
> 
> diving into Grout I found very interesting file modules/infra/control/xconnect.c
> which contains trace of bridging support (bridge_domain, GR_L2_MODE_SET,
> gr_l2_iface_mode_req). I'm really interested in this topic and would like to know
> if you have plans on it. Do you have any WIP which you could share?
> This bits already give some hints on how it could be added etc, but I'd like to
> know more if it is possible.

Hi Andew,

I started to work on the boiler plate code [1], in a very rough (aka non working) state, just to understand how much work is needed to get a complete feature.

—> I may rewrite that completely when I’ll actually test it.
Using a hash table may not be the most efficient for a mac learning switch, and using the lib rte_member may be better for that purpose, emulating a TCAM.
I’ll try both implementations, the deciding factor being how many cycles per packet this will consume !

Here are the pending design decisions:
- how to handle packets to a routing interface in a bridge
- how does this bridge mode integrate in a potential VXLAN implementation, or in EVPN scenarios

HTH,
Christophe 

[1] https://github.com/DPDK/grout/commit/fe8704bd4afed254a20f06538a5098df1d524f3d 



> 
> Yes, the file is not actually used.  It is not built.

Indeed, that file isn’t included, my bad: I removed it as part of the commit.

> 
> Andrew.
>