[dpdk-dev] [RFC] doc: change to diverse and inclusive language

[Aaron Conole]

Stephen Hemminger <stephen at networkplumber.org> writes:

> For diversity reasons, the DPDK should take every effort
> to eliminate master and slave terminology. The actual code change
> is just syntax, but it has bigger impacts.
>
> Lets announce this now and do it in the next API changing
> release.
> ---

Okay.

Usually, I am resistant to API/ABI changes - but actually in this case,
I think we can do this even *now* without breaking the ABI (IIUC, we can
use alias to keep around the old 'functions' - even structures shouldn't
have any change).  The API, we can carry over the existing stuff, and
flag it in documentation as deprecated.

Acked-by: Aaron Conole <aconole at redhat.com>

>  doc/guides/rel_notes/deprecation.rst | 27 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++
>  1 file changed, 27 insertions(+)
>
> diff --git a/doc/guides/rel_notes/deprecation.rst b/doc/guides/rel_notes/deprecation.rst
> index 0bee924255af..6b5cbf8d0b0c 100644
> --- a/doc/guides/rel_notes/deprecation.rst
> +++ b/doc/guides/rel_notes/deprecation.rst
> @@ -138,3 +138,30 @@ Deprecation Notices
>    driver probe scheme. The legacy virtio support will be available through
>    the existing VFIO/UIO based kernel driver scheme.
>    More details at https://patches.dpdk.org/patch/69351/
> +
> +* eal: To be more inclusive in choice of naming, the DPDK project
> +  will follow established diversity guidelines.
> +  The code base will be changed to replace references to sexist
> +  and offensive terms used in function, documentation and variable
> +  names. This change will be progressive across several releases.
> +
> +  The immediate impact to the API/ABI is that references to
> +  master and slave related to DPDK lcore will be changed to
> +  primary and secondary.
> +
> +  For example: ``rte_get_master_lcore()`` will be renamed
> +  to ``rte_get_primary_lcore()``.  For the 20.11, release
> +  both names will be present and the old function will be
> +  marked with the deprecated tag.
> +
> +  The macros related to primary and secondary lcore will also
> +  be change:  ``RTE_LCORE_FOREACH_SLAVE`` will be replaced
> +  with ``RTE_LCORE_FOREACH_SECONDARY``.
> +
> +  Drivers and source not governed by API/ABI policy will change
> +  as soon as practical.
> +
> +  This change aligns DPDK with the MIT diversity guidelines:
> +  https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~mjw/Language/NonSexist/vuw.non-sexist-language-guidelines.txt
> +  and follows precedent of other open source projects: Django, Gnome,
> +  ISC, Python, Rust