1 .. SPDX-License-Identifier: BSD-3-Clause
2 Copyright 2018 The DPDK contributors
4 ABI and API Deprecation
5 =======================
7 See the guidelines document for details of the :doc:`ABI policy
8 <../contributing/abi_policy>`. API and ABI deprecation notices are to be posted
14 * meson: The minimum supported version of meson for configuring and building
15 DPDK will be increased to v0.47.1 (from 0.41) from DPDK 19.05 onwards. For
16 those users with a version earlier than 0.47.1, an updated copy of meson
17 can be got using the ``pip``, or ``pip3``, tool for downloading python
20 * kvargs: The function ``rte_kvargs_process`` will get a new parameter
21 for returning key match count. It will ease handling of no-match case.
23 * eal: To be more inclusive in choice of naming, the DPDK project
24 will replace uses of master/slave in the API's and command line arguments.
26 References to master/slave in relation to lcore will be renamed
27 to initial/worker. The function ``rte_get_master_lcore()``
28 will be renamed to ``rte_get_initial_lcore()``.
29 For the 20.11 release, both names will be present and the
30 old function will be marked with the deprecated tag.
31 The old function will be removed in a future version.
33 The iterator for worker lcores will also change:
34 ``RTE_LCORE_FOREACH_SLAVE`` will be replaced with
35 ``RTE_LCORE_FOREACH_WORKER``.
37 The ``master-lcore`` argument to testpmd will be replaced
38 with ``initial-lcore``. The old ``master-lcore`` argument
39 will produce a runtime notification in 20.11 release, and
40 be removed completely in a future release.
42 * eal: The terms blacklist and whitelist to describe devices used
43 by DPDK will be replaced in the 20.11 relase.
44 This will apply to command line arguments as well as macros.
46 The macro ``RTE_DEV_BLACKLISTED`` will be replaced with ``RTE_DEV_EXCLUDED``
47 and ``RTE_DEV_WHITELISTED`` will be replaced with ``RTE_DEV_INCLUDED``
48 ``RTE_BUS_SCAN_BLACKLIST`` and ``RTE_BUS_SCAN_WHITELIST`` will be
49 replaced with ``RTE_BUS_SCAN_EXCLUDED`` and ``RTE_BUS_SCAN_INCLUDED``
50 respectively. Likewise ``RTE_DEVTYPE_BLACKLISTED_PCI`` and
51 ``RTE_DEVTYPE_WHITELISTED_PCI`` will be replaced with
52 ``RTE_DEVTYPE_EXCLUDED`` and ``RTE_DEVTYPE_INCLUDED``.
54 The old macros will be marked as deprecated in 20.11 and any
55 usage will cause a compile warning. They will be removed in
58 The command line arguments to ``rte_eal_init`` will change from
59 ``-b, --pci-blacklist`` to ``-x, --exclude`` and
60 ``-w, --pci-whitelist`` to ``-i, --include``.
61 The old command line arguments will continue to be accepted in 20.11
62 but will cause a runtime warning message. The old arguments will
63 be removed in a future release.
65 * eal: The function ``rte_eal_remote_launch`` will return new error codes
66 after read or write error on the pipe, instead of calling ``rte_panic``.
68 * rte_atomicNN_xxx: These APIs do not take memory order parameter. This does
69 not allow for writing optimized code for all the CPU architectures supported
70 in DPDK. DPDK will adopt C11 atomic operations semantics and provide wrappers
71 using C11 atomic built-ins. These wrappers must be used for patches that
72 need to be merged in 20.08 onwards. This change will not introduce any
73 performance degradation.
75 * rte_smp_*mb: These APIs provide full barrier functionality. However, many
76 use cases do not require full barriers. To support such use cases, DPDK will
77 adopt C11 barrier semantics and provide wrappers using C11 atomic built-ins.
78 These wrappers must be used for patches that need to be merged in 20.08
79 onwards. This change will not introduce any performance degradation.
81 * igb_uio: In the view of reducing the kernel dependency from the main tree,
82 as a first step, the Technical Board decided to move ``igb_uio``
83 kernel module to the dpdk-kmods repository in the /linux/igb_uio/ directory
85 Minutes of Technical Board Meeting of `2019-11-06
86 <https://mails.dpdk.org/archives/dev/2019-November/151763.html>`_.
88 * lib: will fix extending some enum/define breaking the ABI. There are multiple
89 samples in DPDK that enum/define terminated with a ``.*MAX.*`` value which is
90 used by iterators, and arrays holding these values are sized with this
91 ``.*MAX.*`` value. So extending this enum/define increases the ``.*MAX.*``
92 value which increases the size of the array and depending on how/where the
93 array is used this may break the ABI.
94 ``RTE_ETH_FLOW_MAX`` is one sample of the mentioned case, adding a new flow
95 type will break the ABI because of ``flex_mask[RTE_ETH_FLOW_MAX]`` array
96 usage in following public struct hierarchy:
97 ``rte_eth_fdir_flex_conf -> rte_fdir_conf -> rte_eth_conf (in the middle)``.
98 Need to identify this kind of usages and fix in 20.11, otherwise this blocks
99 us extending existing enum/define.
100 One solution can be using a fixed size array instead of ``.*MAX.*`` value.
102 * mbuf: Some fields will be converted to dynamic API in DPDK 20.11
103 in order to reserve more space for the dynamic fields, as explained in
104 `this presentation <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ttl6MlhmzWY>`_.
105 The following static fields will be moved as dynamic:
108 - ``userdata`` / ``udata64``
111 As a consequence, the layout of the ``struct rte_mbuf`` will be re-arranged,
112 avoiding impact on vectorized implementation of the driver datapaths,
113 while evaluating performance gains of a better use of the first cache line.
116 * ethdev: the legacy filter API, including
117 ``rte_eth_dev_filter_supported()``, ``rte_eth_dev_filter_ctrl()`` as well
118 as filter types MACVLAN, ETHERTYPE, FLEXIBLE, SYN, NTUPLE, TUNNEL, FDIR,
119 HASH and L2_TUNNEL, is superseded by the generic flow API (rte_flow) in
120 PMDs that implement the latter.
121 The legacy API will be removed in DPDK 20.11.
123 * ethdev: The flow director API, including ``rte_eth_conf.fdir_conf`` field,
124 and the related structures (``rte_fdir_*`` and ``rte_eth_fdir_*``),
125 will be removed in DPDK 20.11.
127 * ethdev: The legacy L2 tunnel filtering API is deprecated as the rest of
128 the legacy filtering API.
129 The functions ``rte_eth_dev_l2_tunnel_eth_type_conf`` and
130 ``rte_eth_dev_l2_tunnel_offload_set`` which were not marked as deprecated,
131 will be removed in DPDK 20.11.
133 * ethdev: Update API functions returning ``void`` to return ``int`` with
134 negative errno values to indicate various error conditions (e.g.
135 invalid port ID, unsupported operation, failed operation):
137 - ``rte_eth_dev_stop``
138 - ``rte_eth_dev_close``
140 * ethdev: New offload flags ``DEV_RX_OFFLOAD_FLOW_MARK`` will be added in 19.11.
141 This will allow application to enable or disable PMDs from updating
142 ``rte_mbuf::hash::fdir``.
143 This scheme will allow PMDs to avoid writes to ``rte_mbuf`` fields on Rx and
144 thereby improve Rx performance if application wishes do so.
145 In 19.11 PMDs will still update the field even when the offload is not
148 * ethdev: Add new fields to ``rte_eth_rxconf`` to configure the receiving
149 queues to split ingress packets into multiple segments according to the
150 specified lengths into the buffers allocated from the specified
151 memory pools. The backward compatibility to existing API is preserved.
153 * ethdev: ``rx_descriptor_done`` dev_ops and ``rte_eth_rx_descriptor_done``
154 will be removed in 21.11.
155 Existing ``rte_eth_rx_descriptor_status`` and ``rte_eth_tx_descriptor_status``
156 APIs can be used as replacement.
158 * ethdev: The port mirroring API can be replaced with a more fine grain flow API.
159 The structs ``rte_eth_mirror_conf``, ``rte_eth_vlan_mirror`` and the functions
160 ``rte_eth_mirror_rule_set``, ``rte_eth_mirror_rule_reset`` will be marked
161 as deprecated in DPDK 20.11, along with the associated macros ``ETH_MIRROR_*``.
162 This API will be fully removed in DPDK 21.11.
164 * ethdev: The ``struct rte_flow_item_eth`` and ``struct rte_flow_item_vlan``
165 structs will be modified, to include an additional value, indicating existence
166 or absence of a VLAN header following the current header, as proposed in RFC
167 https://mails.dpdk.org/archives/dev/2020-August/177536.html.
169 * ethdev: The ``struct rte_flow_item_ipv6`` struct will be modified to include
170 additional values, indicating existence or absence of IPv6 extension headers
171 following the IPv6 header, as proposed in RFC
172 https://mails.dpdk.org/archives/dev/2020-August/177257.html.
174 * security: The API ``rte_security_session_create`` takes only single mempool
175 for session and session private data. So the application need to create
176 mempool for twice the number of sessions needed and will also lead to
177 wastage of memory as session private data need more memory compared to session.
178 Hence the API will be modified to take two mempool pointers - one for session
179 and one for private data.
181 * cryptodev: ``RTE_CRYPTO_AEAD_LIST_END`` from ``enum rte_crypto_aead_algorithm``,
182 ``RTE_CRYPTO_CIPHER_LIST_END`` from ``enum rte_crypto_cipher_algorithm`` and
183 ``RTE_CRYPTO_AUTH_LIST_END`` from ``enum rte_crypto_auth_algorithm``
186 * cryptodev: support for using IV with all sizes is added, J0 still can
187 be used but only when IV length in following structs ``rte_crypto_auth_xform``,
188 ``rte_crypto_aead_xform`` is set to zero. When IV length is greater or equal
189 to one it means it represents IV, when is set to zero it means J0 is used
190 directly, in this case 16 bytes of J0 need to be passed.
192 * scheduler: The functions ``rte_cryptodev_scheduler_slave_attach``,
193 ``rte_cryptodev_scheduler_slave_detach`` and
194 ``rte_cryptodev_scheduler_slaves_get`` will be replaced in 20.11 by
195 ``rte_cryptodev_scheduler_worker_attach``,
196 ``rte_cryptodev_scheduler_worker_detach`` and
197 ``rte_cryptodev_scheduler_workers_get`` accordingly.
199 * eventdev: Following structures will be modified to support DLB PMD
200 and future extensions:
202 - ``rte_event_dev_info``
203 - ``rte_event_dev_config``
204 - ``rte_event_port_conf``
206 Patches containing justification, documentation, and proposed modifications
209 - https://patches.dpdk.org/patch/71457/
210 - https://patches.dpdk.org/patch/71456/
212 * acl: ``RTE_ACL_CLASSIFY_NUM`` enum value will be removed.
213 This enum value is not used inside DPDK, while it prevents to add new
214 classify algorithms without causing an ABI breakage.
216 * sched: To allow more traffic classes, flexible mapping of pipe queues to
217 traffic classes, and subport level configuration of pipes and queues
218 changes will be made to macros, data structures and API functions defined
219 in "rte_sched.h". These changes are aligned to improvements suggested in the
220 RFC https://mails.dpdk.org/archives/dev/2018-November/120035.html.
222 * sched: To allow dynamic configuration of the subport bandwidth profile,
223 changes will be made to data structures ``rte_sched_subport_params``,
224 ``rte_sched_port_params`` and new data structure, API functions will be
225 defined in ``rte_sched.h``. These changes are aligned as suggested in the
226 RFC https://mails.dpdk.org/archives/dev/2020-July/175161.html
228 * metrics: The function ``rte_metrics_init`` will have a non-void return
229 in order to notify errors instead of calling ``rte_exit``.
231 * power: ``rte_power_set_env`` function will no longer return 0 on attempt
232 to set new power environment if power environment was already initialized.
233 In this case the function will return -1 unless the environment is unset first
234 (using ``rte_power_unset_env``). Other function usage scenarios will not change.
236 * python: Since the beginning of 2020, Python 2 has officially reached
237 end-of-support: https://www.python.org/doc/sunset-python-2/.
238 Python 2 support will be completely removed in 20.11.
239 In 20.08, explicit deprecation warnings will be displayed when running
240 scripts with Python 2.
242 * dpdk-setup.sh: This old script relies on deprecated stuff, and especially
243 ``make``. Given environments are too much variables for such a simple script,
244 it will be removed in DPDK 20.11.
245 Some useful parts may be converted into specific scripts.