Generic flow string parser

[Stephen Hemminger]

On Fri, 28 Apr 2023 12:13:26 -0700
Cliff Burdick <shaklee3 at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi Stephen, it would definitely not be worthwhile to repeat everything
> that's already tested with testpmd. I was thinking that given that there
> already is a "flow_parse" function that does almost everything needed,
> something like that could be exposed. If we think of the testpmd flow
> string as a sort of "IR" for string flow specification, that would allow
> others to implement higher-level transform of a schema like JSON or YAML
> into the testpmd language. Due to the complexity of testpmd and how it's
> the source of true for testing flows, I think it's too great of an ask to
> have testpmd support a new type of parsing. My only suggestion would be to
> take what already exists and expose it in a public API that is included in
> a DPDK install.
> 
> If you look at the "flow_classify" example in DPDK you can already see that
> for that application someone had to write another flow text parser for a
> format they made up. Instead, that example could be converted over to this
> other API as well.

Please don't top post.

The naming issue is that almost all libraries in DPDK start with rte_ prefix
and the testpmd functions do not.

The flow_classify example is pretty much abandonware at this point.
Code is not updated, other than build breakages.
Last time I looked at it noticed lots of code reinvention useless code,
and only supports IPv4. It really needs a rewrite.