Re: [RFC PATCH net-next v3 00/21] ethtool netlink interface, part 1

[Jiri Pirko]

Tue, Feb 19, 2019 at 12:57:27PM CET, mkubecek@xxxxxxx wrote:
>On Tue, Feb 19, 2019 at 11:35:08AM +0100, Jiri Pirko wrote:
>> >- some features provided by ethtool would rather belong to devlink (and
>> >  some are already superseded by devlink); however, only few drivers
>> >  provide devlink interface at the moment and as recent discussion on
>> >  flashing revealed, we cannot rely on devlink's presence
>> 
>> Could you explain why please?
>
>What I mean is the problem discussed under Jakub's devlink flash
>patchset: that he couldn't implement only the devlink callback in nfp
>and rely on the generic fallback to devlink because it wouldn't work if
>devlink is built as a module.

So let's fix that.


>
>But I think this should be addressed. If we agree that flashing (and
>other features provided by ethtool at the moment) rather belongs to
>devlink (which nobody seems to oppose), we should rather try to make it
>possible for drivers to provide only the devlink callback and gradually
>move all in-tree drivers to doing so. (And one day, remove it from
>ethtool_ops.) It doesn't seem to make much sense to have devlink as
>a module in such scenario.

Agreed.

>
>Michal