Re: Drivers, architectures, processor families, etc.

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

On Sat, Aug 05, 2023 at 03:32:37PM -0600, Philip Prindeville wrote:
> 
> 
> > On Aug 3, 2023, at 2:17 AM, Bruce Richardson <bruce.richardson@intel.com> wrote:
> > 
> > On Wed, Aug 02, 2023 at 03:47:59PM -0700, Stephen Hemminger wrote:
> >> On Wed, 2 Aug 2023 15:49:54 -0600
> >> Philip Prindeville <philipp_subx@redfish-solutions.com> wrote:
> >> 
> >>> Hi,
> >>> 
> >>> I'm trying to come up with some Kconfig logic for OpenWRT packaging to help users select the right build options for their hardware.
> >>> 
> >>> Most OpenWRT developers typically cross-compile, so we obviously can't rely on detection on the build host as that's rarely the same as the target machine.
> >>> 
> >>> Looking in the DPDK repo, I don't see any description of the available architectures, drivers, etc. and what I had seen previously was (if I remember) only for x86_64 hardware, and even that I can't seem to locate again.
> >>> 
> >>> Would it make sense to put some of these definitions into the repo itself, so that when new drivers are added, that stands out (at least in the commit logs) and we can capture the permutations of what driver goes with which SoC on what architecture, etc?
> >>> 
> >>> Thanks,
> >>> 
> >>> -Philip
> >>> 
> >> 
> >> DPDK now uses meson which by default builds everything available on the build architecture.
> >> There is intentionally no way to disable drivers, you can disable some libraries though.
> > 
> > Actually, we do now support disabling drivers, and also only selectively
> > enabling specific ones. See disable_drivers and enable_drivers meson
> > options.
> > 
> > To find our different architecture support, I suggest looking in the config
> > directory. The subfolders there often contain cross-files for meson for
> > building for various architectures. For example, config/arm, contains a
> > number of reference files for cross-compiling for different arm platforms.
> > 
> > Regards,
> > /Bruce
> 
> 
> Noticed also that the ARM architecture has configs, but AMD64 seems to be wide open...  just one generic config.
> 
> Is that because some chips, like Xeon-D have on-die NICs, and others like Xeon-E don't?
> 

Its just that folks generally don't cross-compile for x86, and also the
fact that nobody has ever brought it up before. We have no "native-build"
files in DPDK, only cross-files for cross-compilation. However, if there is
demand for them no reason we can't store some.

/Bruce