Re: [dpdk-dev] [PATCHv4 5/5] doc: Add ABI __experimental tag documentation

[Thomas Monjalon <thomas@monjalon.net>]

13/01/2018 01:28, Neil Horman:
> On Fri, Jan 12, 2018 at 03:55:10PM +0000, Ferruh Yigit wrote:
> > After this point agree to using EXPERIMENTAL tag in the version map as standard,
> > but it will be hard to maintain "API is experimental for first release" without
> > help of any automated tool.
> > 
> I completely agree, in fact I would say it is impossible to do without tooling,
> with or without this change.  I think we need to do 1 of 2 things:
> 
> 1) Add some code to checkpatch.pl to put up a warning if any new apis are added
> without marking them as experimental
> 
> 2) Change the documentation to be a suggestion rather than a requirement.
> 
> I'll look into doing (1), but I'm wondering if (2) is the more flexible way to
> go. I'm hesitant to enforce the initial marking of new APIs as experimental.
> Thoughts?

There will be always cases where we are sure that the experimental step
is not needed.
Even if it is required and checked by a tool, we can ignore it, right?
However, there is no big benefit of bypassing the experimental step.

I am for making mandatory the new API as experimental.
We will handle the exceptions case by case if any.