RE: Process for adding a new driver?

[Honnappa Nagarahalli <Honnappa.Nagarahalli@arm.com>]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Morten Brørup <mb@smartsharesystems.com>
> Sent: Monday, September 18, 2023 2:08 AM
> To: techboard@dpdk.org; maxime.coquelin@redhat.com
> Cc: dev@dpdk.org; Ferruh Yigit <ferruh.yigit@amd.com>;
> andrew.rybchenko@oktetlabs.ru; Christian Koue Muf <ckm@napatech.com>;
> Renyong Wan <wanry@3snic.com>
> Subject: Process for adding a new driver?
> 
> Dear DPDK tech board,
> 
> The process for adding a new library to DPDK is well documented [1].
> 
> What is the process for adding a new (NIC) driver?
> 
> It seems like the task of reviewing NIC PMDs from vendors other than
> Broadcom/Intel/Marvell/NVIDIA falls entirely on the next-net tree
> maintainers, Ferruh and Andrew, which doesn't seem like a reasonable
> burden.
> 
> The Napatech driver is too large for Ferruh to review, which in my opinion [2]
> is an unreasonable argument for not accepting it.
> 
> And the 3SNIC driver got no attention by any reviewers [3]. (Although
> Stephen did provide some basic feedback after they polled for review.)
> 
> Overall, I think we should put much more trust in hardware vendors to
> provide high quality drivers for their hardware. We want vendors to upstream
> their drivers, with all the benefits of having the code public. If we make it too
> difficult, they will simply keep their drivers private instead.
Difficulty vs quality control? IMO, it is good to add more drivers. May be we need to control quality through testing reports?

> 
> @Maxime: I propose to put this on the agenda for the coming techboard
> meeting.
> 
> 
> [1]: https://doc.dpdk.org/guides/contributing/new_library.html
> [2]:
> http://inbox.dpdk.org/dev/98CBD80474FA8B44BF855DF32C47DC35D87BAF
> @smartserver.smartshare.dk/
> [3]: http://inbox.dpdk.org/dev/6df9c00f-23a0-423f-840b-
> 4ecf20ff82fc@3snic.com/
> 
> 
> Med venlig hilsen / Kind regards,
> -Morten Brørup