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

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

On Mon, Nov 25, 2024 at 05:25:47PM +0100, David Marchand wrote:
> 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/.
> 
Thanks for the feedback. While when I started this prototyping I felt that
common was the right place for it, at this point I'm now tending towards
this second location - keeping it in net.
Any other thoughts on the relative merits of the various locations?

/Bruce