On Tue, 15 Aug 2023 10:50:15 -0400 ok...@kernel.org wrote: > From: Sinan Kaya <ok...@kernel.org> > > We want to be able to call rte_eal_init() and rte_eal_cleanup() > APIs back to back for maintanance reasons. > > Here is a summary of the code we have seen so far: > > 1. some code support getting called multiple times by keeping > a static variable. > 2. some code initializes once but never clean up after them and > don't have a cleanup API. > 3. some code assumes that they only get called once during the > lifecycle of the process. > > Most changes in this patch center around following the #1 design > principle. > > Why? > > It is not always ideal to reinitialize a DPDK process. Memory needs > to be reinitialized, hugetables need to warm up etc.
I am familiar with the backstory of why this is desirable in your case. But others may not be. It will work for you, but for the wider the range of libraries and drivers it probably won't. As a compromise, can this restart be officially tagged as unsupported. I.e. it may work for some drivers and libraries but not all of them. If nothing else many parts of DPDK still do leak memory on cleanup and currently this is harmless. This has enough impact that it probably needs to wait past 23.11 release. Could you add a test for restart into standalone tests and test-pmd?
