Re: [dpdk-dev] [PATCH 2/2] doc: announce ABI change of struct rte_port_sink_params

[Panu Matilainen <pmatilai@redhat.com>]

On 05/16/2016 04:18 PM, Fan Zhang wrote:
> The ABI changes are planned for rte_port_sink_params, which will be
> supported from release 16.11. Here announces that ABI changes in detail.
>
> Signed-off-by: Fan Zhang <roy.fan.zhang@intel.com>
> Acked-by: Cristian Dumitrescu <cristian.dumitrescu@intel.com>
> ---
>  doc/guides/rel_notes/deprecation.rst | 4 ++++
>  1 file changed, 4 insertions(+)
>
> diff --git a/doc/guides/rel_notes/deprecation.rst b/doc/guides/rel_notes/deprecation.rst
> index d228bae..d2f7306 100644
> --- a/doc/guides/rel_notes/deprecation.rst
> +++ b/doc/guides/rel_notes/deprecation.rst
> @@ -78,3 +78,7 @@ Deprecation Notices
>  * ABI will change for rte_port_source_params struct. The member file_name
>    data type will be changed from char * to const char *. This change targets
>    release 16.11.
> +
> +* ABI will change for rte_port_sink_params struct. The member file_name
> +  data type will be changed from char * to const char *. This change targets
> +  release 16.11.
>

Surely such a minor change doesn't require two separate announcements or 
patches for that matter. In fact I doubt it's an ABI change at all 
(although it is an API change certainly).

However to me the bigger issue is that a change like this alone doesn't 
seem like worth breaking the ABI. The ABI was just broken in 16.04 to 
introduce these struct members (among other things) and to break the ABI 
again just to fixup a const-correctness issue seems a bit much. Could it 
maybe wait until there's some actually compelling reason to break the ABI?

Note that I'm not against the change as such, const-correctness is a 
good thing.

	- Panu -