Re: [dpdk-dev] [PATCH v2] app/testpmd: Document what the application does.

[Ferruh Yigit <ferruh.yigit@intel.com>]

On 9/13/2021 7:33 PM, Ben Pfaff wrote:
> I could not find anything in the documentation that says what
> testpmd does.  This should save other people time trying to
> figure that out in the future.
> 
> Signed-off-by: Ben Pfaff <blp@ovn.org>
> ---
> v1->v2: Revise introduction instead of option documentation.
>   Thanks to Thomas Monjalon for advice.
> 
>  doc/guides/testpmd_app_ug/intro.rst | 10 +++++++---
>  1 file changed, 7 insertions(+), 3 deletions(-)
> 
> diff --git a/doc/guides/testpmd_app_ug/intro.rst b/doc/guides/testpmd_app_ug/intro.rst
> index 5d8d8cf4eb..1129f53c62 100644
> --- a/doc/guides/testpmd_app_ug/intro.rst
> +++ b/doc/guides/testpmd_app_ug/intro.rst
> @@ -6,9 +6,13 @@ Introduction
>  
>  This document is a user guide for the ``testpmd`` example application that is shipped as part of the Data Plane Development Kit.
>  
> -The ``testpmd`` application can be used to test the DPDK in a packet forwarding mode
> -and also to access NIC hardware features such as Flow Director.
> -It also serves as a example of how to build a more fully-featured application using the DPDK SDK.
> +``testpmd`` is a tool to test ethdev NIC features, including NIC
> +hardware features such as Flow Director.  It receives packets on each
> +configured port and forwards them.  By default, packets received on
> +port 0 are forwarded to port 1, and vice versa, and similarly for
> +ports 2 and 3, ports 4 and 5, and so on.  If an odd number of ports is
> +configured, packets received on the last port are sent back out on the
> +same port.
>  

Ahh, I missed that there is a v2, I already commented on the first version.

Just to summarize here, I think documenting a specific forwarding engine and
specific configuration of it as what 'testpmd' does can be misleading.

What about making it a little more generic and provide link for more details,
like: https://doc.dpdk.org/guides/testpmd_app_ug/testpmd_funcs.html#set-fwd



>  The guide shows how to build and run the testpmd application and
>  how to configure the application from the command line and the run-time environment.
>