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From: Luca Boccassi <bluca@debian.org>
To: Neil Horman <nhorman@tuxdriver.com>, dev@dpdk.org
Subject: Re: [dpdk-dev] [PATCHv4 0/4] dpdk: enhance EXPERIMENTAL api tagging
Date: Sat, 30 Dec 2017 20:20:58 +0100	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <1514661658.6638.59.camel@debian.org> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <20171213151728.16747-1-nhorman@tuxdriver.com>

On Wed, 2017-12-13 at 10:17 -0500, Neil Horman wrote:
> Hey all-
>         A few days ago, I was lamenting the fact that, when reviewing
> patches I
> would frequently complain about ABI changes that were actually
> considered safe
> because they were part of the EXPERIMENTAL api set.  John M. asked me
> then what
> I might do to improve the situation, and the following patch set is a
> proposal
> that I've come up with.
> 
>         In thinking about the problem I identified two issues that I
> think we
> can improve on in this area:
> 
> 1) Make experimental api calls more visible in the source code.  That
> is to say,
> when reviewing patches, it would be nice to have some sort of visual
> reference
> that indicates that the changes being made are part of an
> experimental API and
> therefore ABI concerns need not be addressed
> 
> 2) Make experimenal api usage more visible to consumers of the DPDK,
> so that
> they can make a more informed decision about the API's they consume
> in their
> application.  We make an effort to document all the experimental
> API's, but
> there is no guarantee that a user will check the documentation before
> making use
> of a new library.
> 
> This patch set attempts to achieve both of the above goals.  To do
> this I've
> added an __experimental macro tag, suitable for inserting into api
> forward
> declarations and definitions.
> 
> The presence of the tag in the header and c files where the api code
> resides
> increases the likelyhood that any patch submitted against them will
> include the
> tag in the context, making it clear to reviewers that ABI stability
> isn't a
> concern here.
> 
> Also, This tag marks each function it is used on with an attibute
> causing any
> use of the fuction to emit a warning during the build
> with a message indicating that the API call in question is not yet
> part of the
> stable interface.  Developers can then make an informed decision to
> suppress
> that warning or not.
> 
> Because there is internal use of several experimental API's, this set
> also
> includes a new override macro ALLOW_EXPERIMENTAL_APIS to
> automatically
> suprress these warnings.  I think its fair to assume that, for
> internal use, we
> almost always want to suppress these warnings, as by definition any
> change to
> the apis (even their removal) must be done in parallel with an
> appropriate
> change in the calling locations, lest the dpdk build itself break.
> 
> Neil
> 
> ---
> Change Notes:
> v2)
> * Cleaned up checkpatch errors
> * Added Allowance for building experimental on BSD
> * Swapped Patch 3 and 4 so that we didn't have a commit level that
> issued
>   warnings/errors without need
> 
> v3)
> * On suggestion from Bruce, modify ALLOW_EXPERIMENTAL_APIS to be
> defined in
>   CFLAGS rather than a makefile variable.  This is more flexible in
> that it
>   allows us to suppress this specific feature rather than all uses of
> the
>   deprecated attribute, as we might use it for other features in the
> furute
> 
> v4)
> * Added documentation patch to contributors guide

Acked-by: Luca Boccassi <bluca@debian.org>

I really like the idea of showing warnings at build time for users of
the libraries, in fact I like it so much I'm going to shamelessly steal
it for another few projects I work on where we have an experimental
(DRAFT) api system :-)

-- 
Kind regards,
Luca Boccassi

  parent reply	other threads:[~2017-12-30 19:21 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 83+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2017-12-01 18:56 [dpdk-dev] [PATCH " Neil Horman
2017-12-01 18:56 ` [dpdk-dev] [PATCH 1/4] buildtools: Add tool to check EXPERIMENTAL api exports Neil Horman
2017-12-01 18:56 ` [dpdk-dev] [PATCH 2/4] compat: Add __experimental macro Neil Horman
2017-12-01 18:56 ` [dpdk-dev] [PATCH 3/4] dpdk: add __experimental tag to appropriate api calls Neil Horman
2017-12-01 18:56 ` [dpdk-dev] [PATCH 4/4] Makefiles: Add experimental tag check and warnings to trigger on use Neil Horman
2017-12-08 17:14 ` [dpdk-dev] [PATCHv2 0/4] dpdk: enhance EXPERIMENTAL api tagging Neil Horman
2017-12-08 17:14   ` [dpdk-dev] [PATCHv2 1/4] buildtools: Add tool to check EXPERIMENTAL api exports Neil Horman
2017-12-08 17:14   ` [dpdk-dev] [PATCHv2 2/4] compat: Add __experimental macro Neil Horman
2017-12-08 17:14   ` [dpdk-dev] [PATCHv2 3/4] Makefiles: Add experimental tag check and warnings to trigger on use Neil Horman
2017-12-11 11:35     ` Bruce Richardson
2017-12-11 12:40       ` Neil Horman
2017-12-11 12:45         ` Bruce Richardson
2017-12-11 18:44           ` Neil Horman
2017-12-08 17:14   ` [dpdk-dev] [PATCHv2 4/4] dpdk: add __experimental tag to appropriate api calls Neil Horman
2017-12-11 19:36 ` [dpdk-dev] [PATCHv3 0/4] dpdk: enhance EXPERIMENTAL api tagging Neil Horman
2017-12-11 19:36   ` [dpdk-dev] [PATCHv3 1/4] buildtools: Add tool to check EXPERIMENTAL api exports Neil Horman
2017-12-11 19:36   ` [dpdk-dev] [PATCHv3 2/4] compat: Add __experimental macro Neil Horman
2017-12-11 19:36   ` [dpdk-dev] [PATCHv3 3/4] Makefiles: Add experimental tag check and warnings to trigger on use Neil Horman
2017-12-11 19:36   ` [dpdk-dev] [PATCHv3 4/4] dpdk: add __experimental tag to appropriate api calls Neil Horman
2017-12-12 14:07   ` [dpdk-dev] [PATCHv3 0/4] dpdk: enhance EXPERIMENTAL api tagging Bruce Richardson
2017-12-30 17:15     ` Neil Horman
2018-01-04 12:56       ` Neil Horman
2018-01-05 14:08         ` Thomas Monjalon
2018-01-05 16:00           ` Neil Horman
2018-01-09  1:32             ` [dpdk-dev] [dpdk-ci] " Neil Horman
2018-01-09  9:20               ` Thomas Monjalon
2018-01-09 12:36                 ` Neil Horman
2018-01-19 15:44                 ` Neil Horman
2017-12-12 14:33   ` [dpdk-dev] " Mcnamara, John
2017-12-12 20:18     ` Neil Horman
2017-12-12 15:11   ` Wiles, Keith
2017-12-12 20:14     ` Neil Horman
2017-12-13 15:17 ` [dpdk-dev] [PATCHv4 " Neil Horman
2017-12-13 15:17   ` [dpdk-dev] [PATCHv4 1/5] buildtools: Add tool to check EXPERIMENTAL api exports Neil Horman
2018-01-21 18:31     ` Thomas Monjalon
2018-01-21 22:07       ` Neil Horman
2017-12-13 15:17   ` [dpdk-dev] [PATCHv4 2/5] compat: Add __experimental macro Neil Horman
2018-01-21 18:37     ` Thomas Monjalon
2017-12-13 15:17   ` [dpdk-dev] [PATCHv4 3/5] Makefiles: Add experimental tag check and warnings to trigger on use Neil Horman
2018-01-11 20:06     ` Ferruh Yigit
2018-01-11 20:50       ` Neil Horman
2018-01-12 11:49         ` Ferruh Yigit
2018-01-12 12:44           ` Neil Horman
2018-01-21 18:54             ` Thomas Monjalon
2018-01-22  1:34               ` Neil Horman
2018-01-22  1:37                 ` Thomas Monjalon
2018-01-21 18:50     ` Thomas Monjalon
2018-01-22  1:19       ` Neil Horman
2017-12-13 15:17   ` [dpdk-dev] [PATCHv4 4/5] dpdk: add __experimental tag to appropriate api calls Neil Horman
2018-01-11 20:06     ` Ferruh Yigit
2018-01-11 21:24       ` Neil Horman
2018-01-12 11:50         ` Ferruh Yigit
2018-01-12 14:25           ` Neil Horman
2018-01-12 15:53             ` Ferruh Yigit
2017-12-13 15:17   ` [dpdk-dev] [PATCHv4 5/5] doc: Add ABI __experimental tag documentation Neil Horman
2017-12-13 15:32     ` Bruce Richardson
2018-01-11 20:06     ` Ferruh Yigit
2018-01-11 21:29       ` Neil Horman
2018-01-12 11:50         ` Ferruh Yigit
2018-01-12 14:37           ` Neil Horman
2018-01-12 15:55             ` Ferruh Yigit
2018-01-13  0:28               ` Neil Horman
2018-01-13 15:56                 ` Thomas Monjalon
2018-01-14 14:36                   ` Neil Horman
2018-01-14 16:27                     ` Thomas Monjalon
2018-01-21 20:14     ` Thomas Monjalon
2017-12-13 15:32   ` [dpdk-dev] [PATCHv4 0/4] dpdk: enhance EXPERIMENTAL api tagging Bruce Richardson
2017-12-21 14:21   ` Neil Horman
2017-12-30 19:20   ` Luca Boccassi [this message]
2017-12-31  1:57     ` Neil Horman
2018-01-22  1:48 ` [dpdk-dev] [PATCH 0/5] " Neil Horman
2018-01-22  1:48   ` [dpdk-dev] [[PATCH v5] 1/5] buildtools: Add tool to check EXPERIMENTAL api exports Neil Horman
2018-01-22  1:48   ` [dpdk-dev] [[PATCH v5] 2/5] compat: Add __rte_experimental macro Neil Horman
2018-01-22  1:48   ` [dpdk-dev] [[PATCH v5] 3/5] Makefiles: Add experimental tag check and warnings to trigger on use Neil Horman
2018-01-22  1:48   ` [dpdk-dev] [[PATCH v5] 4/5] dpdk: add __rte_experimental tag to appropriate api calls Neil Horman
2018-01-22  1:48   ` [dpdk-dev] [[PATCH v5] 5/5] doc: Add ABI __experimental tag documentation Neil Horman
2018-01-23 10:35     ` Mcnamara, John
2018-01-29 21:42       ` Thomas Monjalon
2018-01-29 21:46   ` [dpdk-dev] [PATCH 0/5] dpdk: enhance EXPERIMENTAL api tagging Thomas Monjalon
2018-01-30 15:54     ` Neil Horman
2018-01-30 16:15       ` Thomas Monjalon
2018-01-31 12:18         ` Neil Horman
2018-01-31 12:36           ` Thomas Monjalon

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