Re: [dpdk-dev] [PATCH] add ABI checks

[Thomas Monjalon <thomas@monjalon.net>]

20/12/2019 17:20, Kinsella, Ray:
> From: Richardson, Bruce <bruce.richardson@intel.com>
> > From: David Marchand <david.marchand@redhat.com>
> > > +Checking ABI compatibility
> > > +--------------------------
> > > +
> > > +The first thing is to build reference binaries for the latest
> > release
> > > +your patches are built on top of.
> > > +
> > > +Either you are in a git tree and an easy way to identify this is to
> > run::
> > > +
> > > +  git checkout $(git describe --abbrev=0)
> > > +
> > > +Or you use a tarball and you extract the sources in a director of
> > > +your
> > > choice.
> > > +
> > > +Next is building those sources, refer to the previous paragraph.
> > > +You can set ``DPDK_BUILD_TEST_DIR=reference``, so that the builds
> > > +occur in this directory.
> > > +
> > > +Finally, the ABI dump files are generated with the
> > > +``devtools/gen-abi-reference.sh`` script. This script will look for
> > > +builds in the current sub directory ``reference``. But you can set
> > > +the environment variable ``DPDK_ABI_REF_BUILD_DIR`` to a different
> > location.
> > > +
> > > +Once done, you can check your current binaries ABI with this
> > > +reference with the ``devtools/check-abi-reference.sh`` script.
> > >
> > 
> > I still very much dislike forcing the user to generate his own
> > reference version to compare the ABI against. These should be archived
> > and the user should just be able to pull them down via git or http or
> > otherwise. Two reasons for this:
> > 
> > 1. Less error prone, since there is no chance of the user having an
> > incorrect build for whatever reason.
> > 
> > 2. Less effort for the user than asking them to do extra builds. The
> > more steps the user has to follow, the less likely they are to attempt
> > the process.
> 
> +1 ... 100% agree with this.
> 
> Many people won't know or understand what the reference is, 
> or why they to generate it.

I don't want to generate and save the reference in git for each arch.

We can make reference build more automatic with a command like this:
	git clone --branch v19.11 . $DPDK_BUILD_TEST_DIR/abiref-19.11

Also I don't like mixing build and check steps.
I believe the compilation should be simple and right to the point.

This approach, from David, does not prevent from saving the dumps later
if we really feel a strong need.

That's why I suggest going with this patch.