Re: [dpdk-dev] decision process to accept new libraries

[Thomas Monjalon <thomas.monjalon@6wind.com>]

2017-02-22 19:06, Dumitrescu, Cristian:
> ...<snip>
> 
> > The impact of having separate repositories is to reduce the work of a
> > contributor touching many areas in a rework. This cost is transfered
> > to the maintainer of the separate repository impacted by the change
> > in the main repository. So it becomes this question:
> > Do we prefer requiring some maintenance work from the contributors or
> > from the maintainers?
> 
> IMO it is not fair for a contributor of the "main" repository to break stuff in other repos without fixing the other repos.

The question is "is it fair to ask a contributor to fix every libraries using a core one?"

> This essentially leads to the "other" repos becoming second class citizens that can be broken at any time without prior notice or the right to influence the change. The amount of maintenance work becomes very difficult to quantify (e.g. we all know what a ripple effect a chance in the mbuf structure can cause to any  of those "other" DPDK libraries). This is likely to lead to different release schedules for every of those "other" repos and big hassle in building a single unified DPDK release package. Or is it desired that DPDK release package should only contain the "main" repo?

Yes the idea is to have a core package of the "main" repo.

> What would be the advantages to this model, Thomas?
> And what are the issues with the current model of "you break it, you fix it"?

That's a very good question Cristian.
As said above, it is a matter of deciding the scope of responsibility
of a contributor to a core library, or saying it differently,
who should do the work on other libs and multiple examples?
About the advantages, I think it could ease the contributions on core
libraries and let people who are not full-time on DPDK to contribute
to the core libraries.

That's a real question and feedbacks are very welcome.
I'd like to read opinions of more contributors. Thanks