Re: [PATCH] doc: add sunset clause for experimental tag

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

On Wed, Nov 29, 2023 at 07:27:38AM -0800, Stephen Hemminger wrote:
> The experimental tag is intended as temporary to avoid having
> all of DPDK APIs as experimental and thereby rendering the
> stable policy as worthless.
> 
> Add some wording into the existing policy in doc.
> 
> Signed-off-by: Stephen Hemminger <stephen@networkplumber.org>
> ---
>  doc/guides/contributing/abi_policy.rst | 10 ++++++++++
>  1 file changed, 10 insertions(+)
> 
> diff --git a/doc/guides/contributing/abi_policy.rst b/doc/guides/contributing/abi_policy.rst
> index 5fd405258592..fbf26ea24fd6 100644
> --- a/doc/guides/contributing/abi_policy.rst
> +++ b/doc/guides/contributing/abi_policy.rst
> @@ -328,6 +328,16 @@ new APIs and start finding issues with them, new DPDK APIs will be automatically
>  marked as ``experimental`` to allow for a period of stabilization before they
>  become part of a tracked ABI version.
>  
> +The experimental tag has as limited lifetime (sunset provision).
> +It is expected to be removed in a future release.
> +The tag may be removed as soon as the second release with the new DPDK API.
> +After one year, the API must be stable and tag removed unless an
> +exception is approved by the technical board.
> +

We should also mention about the API being possibly removed or reworked.

> +For example, the symbol ``rte_flow_dev_dump`` was introduced
> +in 20.02 release as ``experimental``. The tag could have been removed
> +in 20.05 release, and should have been removed in 21.03 release.
> +
>  Note that marking an API as experimental is a multi step process.
>  To mark an API as experimental, the symbols which are desired to be exported
>  must be placed in an EXPERIMENTAL version block in the corresponding libraries'
> -- 
> 2.42.0
>