Re: [PATCH] drivers/net: remove alias for virtual devices

[Bruce Richardson <bruce.richardson@intel.com>]

On Wed, Sep 21, 2022 at 04:26:11PM +0200, Thomas Monjalon wrote:
> I think this patch requires a techboard vote
> as it is dropping some user-facing naming.
> 
+1
I personally am a little uncertain about dropping this support. It could be
widely used, still, and removing it doesn't save us a huge amount.

What would be better might be to:
* automatically add the eth-to-net aliases at a higher level so it is all
  in one place, rather than having it in each driver.
* once centralised, we can add a warning on use of the eth_ aliases to
  inform users that they should use "net" instead.
> 
> 21/09/2022 15:34, Ferruh Yigit:
> > Virtual devices are probed/matched based on name, and this name is user
> > facing value, since device name is provided by user as eal '--vdev'
> > parameter, like:
> > `dpdk-testpmd --vdev net_null0`.
> > 
> > The current name format is 'net_<pmd_name>', but previously it was
> > 'eth_<pmd_name>', and an alias to legacy naming format was introduced
> > for backward compatibility.
> > Commit 9fa80cb26bd0 ("net: register aliases for renamed vdev drivers")
> > 
> > Since new device name format is around for 6 years, removing alias for
> > legacy naming.
> > 
> > Signed-off-by: Ferruh Yigit <ferruh.yigit@amd.com>
> > ---
> > Alias for device name is used by other device abstraction layers too,
> > ('crypto', 'baseband', 'raw'), since I am not aware of their maturity
> > level, leaving them out in this patch.
> 
> 
> 
>