[dpdk-dev] Move flow parsing from test-pmd to librte_cmdline

[Gaëtan Rivet]

Hi George,

On Fri, Jan 12, 2018 at 10:21:41AM +0100, george.dit at gmail.com wrote:
> Dear DPDK developers,
> 
> In an attempt to integrate the Flow API into a third party application and
> allow the e.g., insertion/deletion of NIC classification rules from that
> application, I noticed that flow command parsing as per the most recent
> DPDK versions (i.e., 17.08 or 17.11) might benefit from some useful
> modifications.
> 
> Specifically, librte_cmdline provides libraries for parsing a flow command
> into tokens, but then the library for e.g., creating/deleting a flow rule
> for a DPDK NIC resides in test-pmd (app/test-pmd/cmdline_flow.c).
> 
> My proposal is to move the app/test-pmd/cmdline_flow.c library into
> librte_cmdline, thus facilitate flow parsing for third party DPDK
> applications.
> I have a working prototype for both DPDK 17.08 and 17.11. This prototype
> extends librte_cmdline with 2 additional files (cmdline_flow.h and .c) and
> removes this functionality from test-pmd.
> The benefit is that the functions in cmdline_flow.h can now be re-used by
> any DPDK applications, which was not the case before.
> 
> Do you think that the DPDK community will benefit from my patch? If so, I
> am happy to send you the patch for review and get your feedback to further
> improve it.
> In case I missed some other way to achieve my goal (without the need to
> patch DPDK), please let me know.
> 
> Best regards,

My opinion would that it might be interesting to have parsing helpers
available for complex APIs such as this one, ready to be dropped into
applications.

There were contentions not too long ago about the status of rte_cmdline,
but in any case I think it could be interesting to have your input on
this.

So don't hesitate to send it.

Cheers,
-- 
Gaëtan Rivet
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