On 2/18/2020 10:46 AM, Ray Kinsella wrote: > When a maintainer is promoting an API to become part of the next major ABI > version by removing the experimental tag, possibly a few releases in > advance of the declaration of the next ABI version. The maintainer may > choose to offer an alias to the experimental tag, as removing the tag > before the declaration of the next major ABI version, would cause an ABI > breakage for applications using the API. > > Signed-off-by: Ray Kinsella <m...@ashroe.eu> > --- > doc/guides/contributing/abi_policy.rst | 10 ++++++++++ > 1 file changed, 10 insertions(+) > > diff --git a/doc/guides/contributing/abi_policy.rst > b/doc/guides/contributing/abi_policy.rst > index 05ca959..7ae7de7 100644 > --- a/doc/guides/contributing/abi_policy.rst > +++ b/doc/guides/contributing/abi_policy.rst > @@ -159,6 +159,11 @@ The requirements for changing the ABI are: > ``experimental``, as described in the section on :ref:`Experimental APIs > and Libraries <experimental_apis>`. > > + - In situations in which an ``experimental`` API has been stable for some > + time. When promoting the API to become part of the next ABI version, the > + maintainer may choose to provide an alias to the ``experimental`` tag, > so > + as not to break consuming applications. > + > #. If a newly proposed API functionally replaces an existing one, when the > new > API becomes non-experimental, then the old one is marked with > ``__rte_deprecated``. > @@ -317,6 +322,11 @@ not required. Though, an API should remain in > experimental state for at least > one release. Thereafter, the normal process of posting patch for review to > mailing list can be followed. > > +After the experimental tag has been formally removed, a tree/sub-tree > maintainer > +may choose to offer an alias to the experimental tag so as not to break > +applications using the API. The alias is then dropped at the declaration of > next > +major ABI version. > + > Libraries > ~~~~~~~~~ > >
This leaves the decision to author/maintainer, I am more for making this a requirement, but at least this enables it and better than nothing ;) Acked-by: Ferruh Yigit <ferruh.yi...@intel.com>
