Re: [RFC PATCH 00/21] Reduce code duplication across Intel NIC drivers

[David Marchand <david.marchand@redhat.com>]

Hello Bruce,

On Fri, Nov 22, 2024 at 1:54 PM Bruce Richardson
<bruce.richardson@intel.com> wrote:
>
> This RFC attempts to reduce the amount of code duplication across a
> number of Intel NIC drivers, specifically: ixgbe, i40e, iavf, and ice.

Thanks for starting this effort!

>
> The first patch extract a function from the Rx side, otherwise the
> majority of the changes are on the Tx side, leading to a converged Tx
> queue structure across the 4 drivers, and a large number of common
> functions.
>
> Open question:
> * How should common code across drivers within a single device class be
>   managed?
>   - For now, I've created an "intel_eth" folder within the "common"
>     driver directory, thinking about it after, it  implies to me that
>     it is common across driver classes.
>   - Would it be better to create an "intel_common" directory within the
>     "net" folder?

common/ drivers currently host code that is device class agnostic,
like providing helpers to talk with hw.
No common/ driver has a dependency on some device class library.

This series adds code that is not built into a library so there is no
need to express dependencies in meson.
But if the need arises, could it become a problem? (adding a
dependency to lib/ethdev to some drivers/common/xx/).


For now, I prefer the second proposition and have this code hosted in
drivers/net/.


-- 
David Marchand