2017-03-28 16:24, Bruce Richardson: > On Tue, Mar 28, 2017 at 12:12:26PM +0200, Thomas Monjalon wrote: > > 2017-03-28 09:58, Dumitrescu, Cristian: > > > > > As follow-up to my own mail, for this specific library example, I > > > > > wouldn't look to remove it from DPDK anyway. Parsing ini files is > > > > > fairly > > > > > trivial, so I think it's not a big deal to keep our own version and > > > > > not > > > > > have an external dependency - especially since it's already there and > > > > > not > > > > > a big maintenance burden. > > > > > > > > Removing this lib would not disable anything as it is used only by > > > > examples. > > > > I don't see what would be the issue. > > > > We just have to download the lib when building the example app. > > > > It can be done quite easily in the makefile. > > > > > > Thomas, more than 3 quarters of DPDK libs are only used by applications, > > > is this a reason to remove them? > > > > > > Also, I think the purpose of DPDK is to enable people to write > > > applications, not more libraries. Would you agree? We should make the > > > life easier for the application developers, not libraries. > > > > > > This library is an important utility for applications, similar to > > > librte_cmdline and others. I think it is not fair from your side to refer > > > to librte_cfgfile without any reference to librte_cmdline. > > > > I agree Cristian. > > I was just writing another email about removing librte_cmdline: > > http://dpdk.org/ml/archives/dev/2017-March/061777.html > > This thread was about librte_cfgfile. I hope you'll agree I am really fair > > :) > > > > It is really a scope question and should be managed by the techboard (CC). > > > Sure. > > As for my 2c right now on this lib, I'm very much in favour of keeping > it. I also think we should look to reuse it as an alternative way of > passing parameters to EAL. The existing method of using argc/argv makes > passing a lot of args, e.g for devices clunky, and re-using code from > cfgfile library gives us an alternative without adding extra > dependencies. I also think it could be useful for testpmd, which is > similarly "blessed" with lots of cmdline args to pass.
I think we must improve the API and later deprecate argc/argv. The configuration must be done by the application. It should be the application choice to get its input from the command line, a CLI or a config file.
