1 ABI and API Deprecation
2 =======================
4 See the :doc:`guidelines document for details of the ABI policy </contributing/versioning>`.
5 API and ABI deprecation notices are to be posted here.
11 * The ethdev hotplug API is going to be moved to EAL with a notification
12 mechanism added to crypto and ethdev libraries so that hotplug is now
13 available to both of them. This API will be stripped of the device arguments
14 so that it only cares about hotplugging.
16 * Structures embodying pci and vdev devices are going to be reworked to
17 integrate new common rte_device / rte_driver objects (see
18 http://dpdk.org/ml/archives/dev/2016-January/031390.html).
19 ethdev and crypto libraries will then only handle those objects so that they
20 do not need to care about the kind of devices that are being used, making it
21 easier to add new buses later.
23 * ABI changes are planned for struct rte_pci_id, i.e., add new field ``class``.
24 This new added ``class`` field can be used to probe pci device by class
25 related info. This change should impact size of struct rte_pci_id and struct
26 rte_pci_device. The release 16.04 does not contain these ABI changes, but
29 * The xstats API and rte_eth_xstats struct will be changed to allow retrieval
30 of values without any string copies or parsing.
31 No backwards compatibility is planned, as it would require code duplication
32 in every PMD that supports xstats.
34 * ABI changes are planned for adding four new flow types. This impacts
35 RTE_ETH_FLOW_MAX. The release 2.2 does not contain these ABI changes,
36 but release 2.3 will. [postponed]
38 * ABI will change for rte_mempool struct to move the cache-related fields
39 to the more appropriate rte_mempool_cache struct. The mempool API is
40 also changed to enable external cache management that is not tied to EAL
41 threads. Some mempool get and put calls are removed in favor of a more
42 compact API. The ones that remain are backwards compatible and use the
43 per-lcore default cache if available. This change targets release 16.07.
45 * The rte_mempool struct will be changed in 16.07 to facilitate the new
46 external mempool manager functionality.
47 The ring element will be replaced with a more generic 'pool' opaque pointer
48 to allow new mempool handlers to use their own user-defined mempool
49 layout. Also newly added to rte_mempool is a handler index.
50 The existing API will be backward compatible, but there will be new API
51 functions added to facilitate the creation of mempools using an external
52 handler. The 16.07 release will contain these changes.
54 * A librte_vhost public structures refactor is planned for DPDK 16.07
55 that requires both ABI and API change.
56 The proposed refactor would expose DPDK vhost dev to applications as
57 a handle, like the way kernel exposes an fd to user for locating a
58 specific file, and to keep all major structures internally, so that
59 we are likely to be free from ABI violations in future.