Burn, it is not like we are going to add a huge number of new options in the future and run out of letters.
> On Nov 24, 2014, at 8:52 AM, Venkatesan, Venky <venky.venkatesan at > intel.com> wrote: > > > On 11/24/2014 5:28 AM, Bruce Richardson wrote: >> On Mon, Nov 24, 2014 at 02:19:16PM +0100, Thomas Monjalon wrote: >>> Hi Bruce and Neil, >>> >>> 2014-11-24 11:28, Bruce Richardson: >>>> On Sat, Nov 22, 2014 at 08:35:17PM -0500, Neil Horman wrote: >>>>> On Sat, Nov 22, 2014 at 10:43:39PM +0100, Thomas Monjalon wrote: >>>>>> From: Didier Pallard <didier.pallard at 6wind.com> >>>>>> >>>>>> In current version, used cores can only be specified using a bitmask. >>>>>> It will now be possible to specify cores in 2 different ways: >>>>>> - Using a bitmask (-c [0x]nnn): bitmask must be in hex format >>>>>> - Using a list in following format: -l <c1>[-c2][,c3[-c4],...] >>>>>> >>>>>> The letter -l can stand for lcore or list. >>>>>> >>>>>> -l 0-7,16-23,31 being equivalent to -c 0x80FF00FF >>>>> Do you want to burn an option letter on that? It seems like it might be >>>>> better >>>>> to search the string for 0x and base the selection of bitmap of list >>>>> parsing >>>>> based on its presence or absence. >>> It was the initial proposal (in April): >>> http://dpdk.org/ml/archives/dev/2014-April/002173.html >>> And I liked keeping only 1 option; >>> http://dpdk.org/ml/archives/dev/2014-May/002722.html >>> But Anatoly raised the compatibility problem: >>> http://dpdk.org/ml/archives/dev/2014-May/002723.html >>> Then there was no other comment so Didier and I reworked a separate option. >>> >>>> The existing coremask parsing always assumes a hex coremask, so just >>>> looking >>>> for a 0x will not work. I prefer this scheme of using a new flag for this >>>> method >>>> of specifying the cores to use. >>>> >>>> If you don't want to use up a single-letter option, two alternatives: >>>> 1) use a long option instead. >>>> 2) if the -c parameter includes a "-" or a ",", treat it as a new-style >>>> option, >>>> otherwise treat as old. The only abiguity here would be for specifying a >>>> single >>>> core value 1-9 e.g. is "-c 6" a mask with two bits, or a single-core to >>>> run on. >>>> [0 is obviously a named core as it's an invalid mask, and A-F are obviously >>>> masks.] If we did want this scheme, I would suggest that we allow trailing >>>> commas in the list specifier, so we can force users to clear ambiguity by >>>> either writing "0x6" or "6," i.e. disallow ambiguous values to avoid >>>> problems. >>>> However, this is probably more work that it's worth to avoid using up a >>>> letter >>>> option. >>>> >>>> I'd prefer any of these options to breaking backward compatibility in this >>>> case. >>> We need a consensus here. >>> Who is supporting a "burn" of an one-letter option with clear usage? >>> Who is supporting a "re-merge" of the 2 syntaxes with more complicated rules >>> (list syntax is triggered by presence of "-" or ",")? >>> >> Burn! > Burn ^ 2 ;)
