Re: [dpdk-dev] [PATCH] doc: mark internal symbols in ethdev

["Kinsella, Ray" <mdr@ashroe.eu>]

On 23/06/2020 14:49, Ferruh Yigit wrote:
> The APIs are marked in the doxygen comment but better to mark the
> symbols too. This is planned for v20.11 release.
> 
> Signed-off-by: Ferruh Yigit <ferruh.yigit@intel.com>
> ---
>  doc/guides/rel_notes/deprecation.rst | 6 ++++++
>  1 file changed, 6 insertions(+)
> 
> diff --git a/doc/guides/rel_notes/deprecation.rst b/doc/guides/rel_notes/deprecation.rst
> index 0bee92425..0b0f75720 100644
> --- a/doc/guides/rel_notes/deprecation.rst
> +++ b/doc/guides/rel_notes/deprecation.rst
> @@ -98,6 +98,12 @@ Deprecation Notices
>    Existing ``rte_eth_rx_descriptor_status`` and ``rte_eth_tx_descriptor_status``
>    APIs can be used as replacement.
>  
> +* ethdev: Some internal APIs for driver usage are exported in the .map file.
> +  Now DPDK has ``__rte_internal`` marker so we can mark internal APIs and move
> +  them to the INTERNAL block in .map. Although these APIs are internal it will
> +  break the ABI checks, that is why change is planned for 20.11.
> +  The list of internal APIs are mainly ones listed in ``rte_ethdev_driver.h``.
> +

Acked-by: Ray Kinsella <mdr@ashroe.eu>

A bunch of other folks have already annotated "internal" APIs, and added entries to 
libabigail.abignore to suppress warnings. If you are 100% certain these are never used 
by end applications, you could do likewise.

That said, depreciation notice and completing in 20.11 is definitely the better approach. 
See https://git.dpdk.org/dpdk/tree/devtools/libabigail.abignore#n53



>  * traffic manager: All traffic manager API's in ``rte_tm.h`` were mistakenly made
>    ABI stable in the v19.11 release. The TM maintainer and other contributors have
>    agreed to keep the TM APIs as experimental in expectation of additional spec
>