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Date: Fri, 25 May 2018 07:23:51 -0400
From: Neil Horman <nhorman@tuxdriver.com>
To: Shreyansh Jain <shreyansh.jain@nxp.com>
Cc: "dev@dpdk.org" <dev@dpdk.org>, Ferruh Yigit <ferruh.yigit@intel.com>,
 Thomas Monjalon <thomas@monjalon.net>, bluca@debian.org
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Subject: Re: [dpdk-dev] Process for removing __rte_experimental
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On Fri, May 25, 2018 at 03:05:34PM +0530, Shreyansh Jain wrote:
> While reading through [1], I couldn't understand if __rte_experimental and
> EXPERIMENTAL tag removed from code and map file, respectively, are
> categorized under ABI breakage or not. Thus, whether deprecation for them
> should be sent or not in a release cycle for removal in subsequent release.
> 
> Logically, EXPERIMENTAL APIs are not part of stable APIs/ABIs and hence they
> don't really break an ABI. Thus, deprecation for them doesn't make sense.
> (or, as Luca noted on IRC, removing experimental is like de-deprecation :) )
> 
> On IRC, Luca pointed out that in one of the Tech Board meeting minutes [2],
> this was recorded but that too has slight ambiguity to it.
> 
> Any thoughts on this? Or, was this documented somewhere other than [1]?
> 
> [1] http://dpdk.org/doc/guides/contributing/versioning.html
> [2] https://dpdk.org/ml/archives/dev/2017-October/079961.html (Section 2-b)
> 
Concur with Thomas and Luca.  Use of __rte_experimental denotes APIs that are
not bound by ABI requirements.  Removing the experimental tag is,as you say
de-deprication.