[PATCH 1/2] lib/ethdev: support inline calculating masked item value

[Stephen Hemminger]

On Mon, 17 Nov 2025 09:54:07 +0200
Bing Zhao <bingz at nvidia.com> wrote:

> In the asynchronous API definition and some drivers, the
> rte_flow_item spec value may not be calculated by the driver due to the
> reason of speed of light rule insertion rate and sometimes the input
> parameters will be copied and changed internally.
> 
> After copying, the spec and last will be protected by the keyword
> const and cannot be changed in the code itself. And also the driver
> needs some extra memory to do the calculation and extra conditions
> to understand the length of each item spec. This is not efficient.
> 
> To solve the issue and support usage of the following fix, a new OP
> was introduced to calculate the spec and last values after applying
> the mask inline.
> 
> Signed-off-by: Bing Zhao <bingz at nvidia.com>
> ---

Looked at this patch again:
  1. No API/ABI breakage adding a single flow type is going
     to work great. rte_flow_conv_pattern is internal so changing is no problem.
  2. No need for release note for single flow change.

  3. Do need a test to cover the new code. I know rte_flow is way under tested
     right now. Maybe a chance to use AI to generate a unit test for rte_flow.
     This is important because it is a bug trap to add code that is not covered.