[dpdk-dev] Making rte_eal_pci_probe() in rte_eal_init() optional?

[Roger B Melton <rmelton@cisco.com>]

Hi folks,

With the addition of hot plug support we have been migrating away from 
device discovery and attach at initialization time to a model where it 
is controlled from a separate process.  The separate process manages the 
binding of devices to UIO and instructs the DPDK process when to 
attach.  One of the problems we stumbled onto was that if our control 
process discovered devices and bound them to UIO before our DPDK process 
started, then rte_eal_init() would discover and attach to those devices 
via the rte_eal_pci_probe() invocation. This caused problems later on 
when when our control process, instructed our DPDK process to attach to 
a device.

There are a number of ways we could address this, but the simplest is to 
prevent the rte_eal_pci_probe() at rte_eal_init() time.  In our model we 
will never need it and I suspect others may also be in that boat.

What are your thoughts on adding an argument to instruct rte_eal_init() 
to skip the PCI probe?

Thanks,
-Roger