[PATCH v7 01/12] net/nfp: move app specific attributes to own struct

[Chaoyong He]

> From: Ferruh Yigit <ferruh.yigit at xilinx.com>
> Sent: Monday, September 5, 2022 11:38 PM
> To: Chaoyong He <chaoyong.he at corigine.com>; dev at dpdk.org
> Cc: oss-drivers <oss-drivers at corigine.com>; Niklas Soderlund
> <niklas.soderlund at corigine.com>; Heinrich Kuhn
> <heinrich.kuhn at corigine.com>
> Subject: Re: [PATCH v7 01/12] net/nfp: move app specific attributes to own
> struct
> 
> On 8/12/2022 11:22 AM, Chaoyong He wrote:
> > The NFP Card can load different firmware applications. Currently only
> > the CoreNIC application is supported. This commit makes needed
> > infrastructure changes in order to support other firmware applications
> > too.
> >
> 
> App (or firmware application) is a little confusing, why not just call it FW?
> 
> Same for code variable/struct names, and other patches.

We decided to not just use "FW", as this is an overloaded term for the NFP. 
There is also the lower-level management FW, which is flashed to the card and
 is mostly separate to the application firmware, although they do interact with
 each other.
The application firmware is the software (application) that runs on the card's flow
 processors, is loaded during run time, and determines the behavior of the card. 
To avoid confusion with the different types of firmware we decided to call this 
the app_firmware - this is also similar to what is happening in the nfp kernel driver.

To avoid further confuse, we will change the places where just use "app" to be "app_fw" instead.

> > Clearer separation is made between the PF device and any application
> > specific concepts. The PF struct is now generic regardless of the
> > application loaded. A new struct is also made for the CoreNIC
> > application. Future additions to support other applications should
> > also add an applications specific struct.
> >
> > Signed-off-by: Chaoyong He<chaoyong.he at corigine.com>
> > Signed-off-by: Heinrich Kuhn<heinrich.kuhn at corigine.com>
> > Reviewed-by: Niklas Söderlund<niklas.soderlund at corigine.com>