On Wed, Nov 29, 2023 at 07:27:38AM -0800, Stephen Hemminger wrote: > The experimental tag is intended as temporary to avoid having > all of DPDK APIs as experimental and thereby rendering the > stable policy as worthless. > > Add some wording into the existing policy in doc. > > Signed-off-by: Stephen Hemminger <step...@networkplumber.org> > --- > 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 5fd405258592..fbf26ea24fd6 100644 > --- a/doc/guides/contributing/abi_policy.rst > +++ b/doc/guides/contributing/abi_policy.rst > @@ -328,6 +328,16 @@ new APIs and start finding issues with them, new DPDK > APIs will be automatically > marked as ``experimental`` to allow for a period of stabilization before they > become part of a tracked ABI version. > > +The experimental tag has as limited lifetime (sunset provision). > +It is expected to be removed in a future release. > +The tag may be removed as soon as the second release with the new DPDK API. > +After one year, the API must be stable and tag removed unless an > +exception is approved by the technical board. > +
We should also mention about the API being possibly removed or reworked. > +For example, the symbol ``rte_flow_dev_dump`` was introduced > +in 20.02 release as ``experimental``. The tag could have been removed > +in 20.05 release, and should have been removed in 21.03 release. > + > Note that marking an API as experimental is a multi step process. > To mark an API as experimental, the symbols which are desired to be exported > must be placed in an EXPERIMENTAL version block in the corresponding > libraries' > -- > 2.42.0 >
