[dpdk-dev] [PATCH] mk: fix missing link of librte_vhost in shared, non-combined config

Thomas Monjalon thomas.monjalon at 6wind.com
Fri Feb 13 14:18:48 CET 2015


2015-02-13 12:33, Panu Matilainen:
> On 02/13/2015 11:28 AM, Thomas Monjalon wrote:
> > 2015-02-13 09:27, Panu Matilainen:
> >> On 02/12/2015 05:44 PM, Thomas Monjalon wrote:
> >>> A library is considered as a plugin if there is no public API and it
> >>> registers itself. That's the case of normal PMD.
> >>> But bonding and Xen have some library parts with public API.
> >>> It has been discussed and agreed for bonding but I'm not aware of the Xen case.
> >>
> >> Fair enough, thanks for the explanation.
> >>
> >> Just wondering about versioning of these things - currently all the PMDs
> >> are versioned as well, which is slightly at odds with their expected
> >> usage, dlopen()'ed items usually are not versioned because it makes the
> >> files moving targets. But if a plugin can be an library too then it
> >> clearly needs to be versioned as well.
> >
> > Not sure to understand your considerations.
> > Plugins must be versioned because there can be some incompatibilities
> > like mbuf rework.
> 
> Plugins are version-dependent obviously, but the issue is somewhat 
> different from library versioning. Plugins are generally consumers of 
> the versioned ABIs, whereas libraries are the providers.
> 
> >> I'm just thinking of typical packaging where the unversioned *.so
> >> symlinks are in a -devel subpackage and the versioned libraries are in
> >> the main runtime package. Plugins should be loadable by a stable
> >> unversioned name always, for libraries the linker handles it behind the
> >> scenes. So in packaging these things, plugin *.so links need to be
> >> handled differently (placed into the main package) from others. Not
> >> rocket science to filter by 'pmd' in the name, but a new twist anyway
> >> and easy to get wrong.
> >>
> >> One possibility to make it all more obvious might be having a separate
> >> directory for plugins, the mixed case ccould be handled by symlinks.
> >
> > I think I don't understand which use case you are trying to solve.
> 
> Its a usability/documentation issue more than a technical one. If plugin 
> DSO's are versioned (like they currently are), then loading them via eg 
> -d becomes cumbersome since you need to hunt down and provide the 
> versioned name, eg "testpmd -d librte_pmd_pcap.so.1 [...]"
> 
> Like said above, it can be worked around by leaving the unversioned 
> symlinks in place for plugins in runtime (library) packages, but that 
> sort of voids the point of versioning. One possibility would be 
> introducing a per-version plugin directory that would be used as the 
> default path for dlopen() unless an absolute path is used.

It makes me think that instead of using a -d option per plugin, why not
adding a -D option to load all plugins from a directory?



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