DPDK patches and discussions
 help / color / mirror / Atom feed
From: Luca Boccassi <bluca@debian.org>
To: Honnappa Nagarahalli <Honnappa.Nagarahalli@arm.com>,
	Ray Kinsella <mdr@ashroe.eu>, "dev@dpdk.org" <dev@dpdk.org>,
	Kevin Traynor <ktraynor@redhat.com>,
	"techboard@dpdk.org" <techboard@dpdk.org>
Cc: nd <nd@arm.com>
Subject: Re: [dpdk-dev] DPDK ABI/API Stability
Date: Wed, 10 Apr 2019 10:43:10 +0100	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <5e8659411d5a11297ca2f158d98733b93debc56a.camel@debian.org> (raw)
Message-ID: <20190410094310.ad189_TZugjFfy-lMeENJUKRQyQl1CC9q3aFcMKFQ2A@z> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <VE1PR08MB51494320762A95F46C118B61982E0@VE1PR08MB5149.eurprd08.prod.outlook.com>

On Wed, 2019-04-10 at 05:14 +0000, Honnappa Nagarahalli wrote:
> > I guess the short story is that DPDK ABI hasn't really settled down
> > as the
> > project has matured. If you take a look at the “Backward Compat.”
> > column which measures ABI compatibility compared to the previous
> > releases, you will see significant churn in the ABI over successive
> > releases
> > since v16.04.
> > 
> > Now compare DPDK to GStreamer as an example of a very mature
> > project
> > with a similar intent, a framework for building applications, and
> > which
> > enjoys a very stable API.
> > 
> > https://abi-laboratory.pro/index.php?view=timeline&l=gstreamer
> > 
> > 
> > The DPDK ABI churn has the following affects for users:-
> > 
> > 1. The churn obliges users of DPDK to commit to a constant re-
> > integration
> > and re-validation effort for new versions of DPDK. This effort from
> > their
> > perspective may not add value to their consuming project,
> > particular if
> > they are only updating to "stay current".
> 
> Even if the ABI did not change, any claim of support with newer
> version needs re-validation. I think, re-integration is the only
> extra effort.

From first-hand experience: re-integration and re-validation are
different in scope and resource requirements.
Validation is usually done by the QA group, and usually doesn't cover
just one library that makes up a part of a product. In other words,
whether the DPDK version changes or not, a new version of a product
will typically undergo full regression testing anyway.

Integration is done by the development group. Any engineering-days that
have to be dedicated to re-integrate a new version of DPDK are
resources taken away from development of new features or bug fixing.
Maintenance costs of OSS components are a sometimes overlooked but
critical part of correctly scoping the opex of a project, and it's
something that product/project managers do look at.

> Why would anyone like to move to newer version just to stay current
> if the newer version does not add any value to them? IMO, this is
> doing work for no benefit.

For many reasons. For example the argument I always use is that while
new version Y might not be needed, new version Z might suddenly become
required for the successful delivery of critical feature A, or to fix
critical bug B.
In my experience, jumping from version X to Y and then Y to Z is always
cheaper and quicker and lower effort than jumping from X to Z, and the
larger the jump, the more work it is.

Another reason is that it's orders of magnitude cheaper to consume
dependencies from the base distribution of choice when building a Linux
product, rather than vendorizing. Doing that has of course drawbacks,
including not being in control of the version of dependencies - so you
don't have a choice, you need to keep up as the base distro moves on.

-- 
Kind regards,
Luca Boccassi

  parent reply	other threads:[~2019-04-10  9:43 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 78+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2019-04-03 15:42 Ray Kinsella
2019-04-03 15:42 ` Ray Kinsella
2019-04-03 19:53 ` Luca Boccassi
2019-04-03 19:53   ` Luca Boccassi
2019-04-04  9:29 ` Burakov, Anatoly
2019-04-04  9:29   ` Burakov, Anatoly
2019-04-04 10:54   ` [dpdk-dev] [dpdk-techboard] " Bruce Richardson
2019-04-04 10:54     ` Bruce Richardson
2019-04-04 12:02     ` Luca Boccassi
2019-04-04 12:02       ` Luca Boccassi
2019-04-04 13:05       ` Ray Kinsella
2019-04-04 13:05         ` Ray Kinsella
2019-04-04 13:10         ` Bruce Richardson
2019-04-04 13:10           ` Bruce Richardson
2019-04-05 13:25           ` Ray Kinsella
2019-04-05 13:25             ` Ray Kinsella
2019-04-07  9:37             ` Thomas Monjalon
2019-04-07  9:37               ` Thomas Monjalon
2019-04-04 13:21         ` Luca Boccassi
2019-04-04 13:21           ` Luca Boccassi
2019-04-04 12:52     ` Ray Kinsella
2019-04-04 12:52       ` Ray Kinsella
2019-04-04 14:07       ` Burakov, Anatoly
2019-04-04 14:07         ` Burakov, Anatoly
2019-04-07  9:48         ` Thomas Monjalon
2019-04-07  9:48           ` Thomas Monjalon
2019-04-08  9:04           ` Ray Kinsella
2019-04-08  9:04             ` Ray Kinsella
2019-04-08 10:15             ` Burakov, Anatoly
2019-04-08 10:15               ` Burakov, Anatoly
2019-04-08 13:00               ` Ray Kinsella
2019-04-08 13:00                 ` Ray Kinsella
2019-04-08 13:38                 ` Burakov, Anatoly
2019-04-08 13:38                   ` Burakov, Anatoly
2019-04-08 13:58                   ` David Marchand
2019-04-08 13:58                     ` David Marchand
2019-04-08 14:02                     ` Burakov, Anatoly
2019-04-08 14:02                       ` Burakov, Anatoly
2019-04-08 14:38                       ` David Marchand
2019-04-08 14:38                         ` David Marchand
2019-04-08 15:13                         ` Stephen Hemminger
2019-04-08 15:13                           ` Stephen Hemminger
2019-04-08 15:49                         ` Burakov, Anatoly
2019-04-08 15:49                           ` Burakov, Anatoly
2019-04-10  8:35                           ` David Marchand
2019-04-10  8:35                             ` David Marchand
2019-04-08 15:50                         ` Burakov, Anatoly
2019-04-08 15:50                           ` Burakov, Anatoly
2019-04-09  9:42                   ` Ray Kinsella
2019-04-09  9:42                     ` Ray Kinsella
2019-04-14  0:42             ` Neil Horman
2019-04-14  0:42               ` Neil Horman
2019-04-15  9:10               ` Bruce Richardson
2019-04-15  9:10                 ` Bruce Richardson
2019-04-04 15:51     ` Stephen Hemminger
2019-04-04 15:51       ` Stephen Hemminger
2019-04-04 16:37       ` Burakov, Anatoly
2019-04-04 16:37         ` Burakov, Anatoly
2019-04-04 16:56     ` Kevin Traynor
2019-04-04 16:56       ` Kevin Traynor
2019-04-04 19:08       ` Wiles, Keith
2019-04-04 19:08         ` Wiles, Keith
2019-04-04 20:13         ` Kevin Traynor
2019-04-04 20:13           ` Kevin Traynor
2019-04-05 13:30           ` Ray Kinsella
2019-04-05 13:30             ` Ray Kinsella
2019-04-05 13:29         ` Ray Kinsella
2019-04-05 13:29           ` Ray Kinsella
2019-04-04  9:47 ` [dpdk-dev] " Kevin Traynor
2019-04-04  9:47   ` Kevin Traynor
2019-04-04 13:16   ` Ray Kinsella
2019-04-04 13:16     ` Ray Kinsella
2019-04-10  5:14 ` Honnappa Nagarahalli
2019-04-10  5:14   ` Honnappa Nagarahalli
2019-04-10  9:03   ` [dpdk-dev] [dpdk-techboard] " Bruce Richardson
2019-04-10  9:03     ` Bruce Richardson
2019-04-10  9:43   ` Luca Boccassi [this message]
2019-04-10  9:43     ` [dpdk-dev] " Luca Boccassi

Reply instructions:

You may reply publicly to this message via plain-text email
using any one of the following methods:

* Save the following mbox file, import it into your mail client,
  and reply-to-all from there: mbox

  Avoid top-posting and favor interleaved quoting:
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posting_style#Interleaved_style

* Reply using the --to, --cc, and --in-reply-to
  switches of git-send-email(1):

  git send-email \
    --in-reply-to=5e8659411d5a11297ca2f158d98733b93debc56a.camel@debian.org \
    --to=bluca@debian.org \
    --cc=Honnappa.Nagarahalli@arm.com \
    --cc=dev@dpdk.org \
    --cc=ktraynor@redhat.com \
    --cc=mdr@ashroe.eu \
    --cc=nd@arm.com \
    --cc=techboard@dpdk.org \
    /path/to/YOUR_REPLY

  https://kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/git-send-email.html

* If your mail client supports setting the In-Reply-To header
  via mailto: links, try the mailto: link
Be sure your reply has a Subject: header at the top and a blank line before the message body.
This is a public inbox, see mirroring instructions
for how to clone and mirror all data and code used for this inbox;
as well as URLs for NNTP newsgroup(s).