Re: [dpdk-dev] [RFC v2 1/2] eal: replace libc-based random number generation with LFSR

[Neil Horman <nhorman@tuxdriver.com>]

On Mon, Apr 22, 2019 at 07:44:39PM +0200, Mattias Rönnblom wrote:
> On 2019-04-22 17:52, Mattias Rönnblom wrote:
> > On 2019-04-22 13:34, Neil Horman wrote:
> > 
> > > > +uint64_t __rte_experimental
> > > > +rte_rand(void)
> > > Do you really want to mark this as experimental?  I know it will
> > > trigger the
> > > symbol checker with a warning if you don't, but this function
> > > already existed
> > > previously and was accepted as part of the ABI.  Given that the
> > > prototype hasn't
> > > changed, I think you just need to accept it as a non-experimental
> > > function
> > > 
> > 
> > I'll remove the experimental tag and move it into the 19_05 section
> > (without suggesting it should go into 19.05). That maneuver seems not to
> > trigger any build warnings/errors.
> > 
> 
> OK, so that wasn't true. It does trigger a build error, courtesy of
> buildtools/check-experimental-syms.sh.
> 
> I can't see any obvious way around it. Ideas, anyone?
> 
No, we would have to waive it.  But its pretty clear that This function has been
around forever, so I think it would be worse to demote it to an experimental
symbol.  The only thing you're doing here is moving it from an inline function
(which is arguably part of the ABI, even if it never appeared as a symbol in the
ELF file), to a fully fleged symbol with a new implementation.

Neil