[dpdk-dev] ethdev flow director/filtering/steering API

[Andrew Rybchenko]

On 4/11/19 10:49 AM, Thomas Monjalon wrote:
> About the features called flow director, filtering or flow steering,
> we have some overlap in our API that we should clean.
> It is especially important when considering to freeze the API for stability.
>
> Please read this deprecation notice from December 2016:
>
> * ethdev: the legacy filter API, including
>    ``rte_eth_dev_filter_supported()``, ``rte_eth_dev_filter_ctrl()`` as well
>    as filter types MACVLAN, ETHERTYPE, FLEXIBLE, SYN, NTUPLE, TUNNEL, FDIR,
>    HASH and L2_TUNNEL, is superseded by the generic flow API (rte_flow) in
>    PMDs that implement the latter.
>    Target release for removal of the legacy API will be defined once most
>    PMDs have switched to rte_flow.
>
> We must mark the eth_dev_filter API as deprecated and decide about
> a date to remove it.
>
> Which PMD is implementing this API and not rte_flow?

In accordance with feature matrix is it i40e_vec, ixgbe_vec and qede, but
I think it is just a mistake in documentation.

Flow API support tick is missing for many PMDs which actually implement
(as far as I can see): bonding, dppa2, e100, mlx4, qede, mvpp2, softnic.
I've added maintainers to CC.

> If there are still some, deadlines should help them to be converted :)
> If some help is needed, please ask.
>
> Anyway, after more than 2 years of notice, I think it is fair to mark
> the legacy API as deprecated in 19.05 release.

I agree. I think it is a good idea.

Andrew.