Re: [dpdk-dev] [RFC PATCH] replace DPDK config and build system

["Wiles, Keith" <keith.wiles@intel.com>]

> On Jun 9, 2017, at 4:05 AM, Bruce Richardson <bruce.richardson@intel.com> wrote:
> 
> On Thu, Jun 08, 2017 at 12:07:05PM -0600, Christian Ehrhardt wrote:
>> On Thu, Jun 8, 2017 at 10:26 AM, Stephen Hemminger <
>> stephen@networkplumber.org> wrote:
>> 
>>> On a side note, it would be good to use the GCC extensions that allow
>>> building different versions of the same routine into one binary.
>>> 
>> 
>> And we are back to the discussion we had two years ago about how to deliver
>> generic yet also optimized binaries in one shot.
>> But if the new build system can enable us to do so I'm all in for that.
>> 
>> Thanks for bringing this up in that context Stephen - might be just the
>> right time to look at it again.
>> 
> Yep, we can do that. First though, we need to decide what our minimum
> supported compiler baseline is going to be.
> Also, if the replace the build system, do we want to do a complete
> on-shot replacement, or do we want to keep the older one around in
> parallel for a while e.g. to support older OS's and compilers.

I think it would be a good idea to keep the old version for now.

I would suggest adding the new build system to a sandbox repo until we think we have parity then merge into main. Keep the old system in place to allow for other systems until we believe we really have covered all of the bases.

What would your baseline be ?

I would suggest pick a few distros like Linux Ubuntu, Fedora, Red Hat just a guess at the ones we need to support first.

Think we have to support IA and ARM at the same time for the few distros we start with first or at least pick the most used one for ARM first. 

> 
> /Bruce

Regards,
Keith