On 04/04/2019 11:54, Bruce Richardson wrote: <snip> > > My thoughts on the matter are: > 1. I think we really need to do work to start hiding more of our data > structures - like what Stephen's latest RFC does. This hiding should reduce > the scope for ABI breaks. > 2. Once done, I think we should commit to having an ABI break only in the > rarest of circumstances, and only with very large justification. I want us > to get to the point where DPDK releases can immediately be picked up by all > linux distros and rolled out because they are ABI compatible. >
Maybe techboard should explicitly approve ABI breaks and new APIs (or APIs at transition from experimental to core). Just as a way to get more eyeballs and scrutiny on them. > I'm not sure I like the idea of planned ABI break releases - that strikes > me as a plan where we end up with the same number of ABI breaks as before, > just balled into one release. > > Question for Kevin, Luca and others who look at distro-packaging: is it the > case that each distro will only ship one version of DPDK, or is it possible > that if we have ABI breaks, a distro will provide two copies of DPDK > simultaneously, e.g. a 19.11 ABI version and a 20.11 ABI version? > It would probably double validation and maintenance, so it would require a lot of extra effort. > > So, in short, I'm generally in favour of a zero-tolerance approach for DPDK > ABI breaks, and having ABI breaks as a major event reserved only for > massive rework changes, such as major mbuf changes, or new memory layout or > similar. > > Regards, > /Bruce >
