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: The function ``rte_eal_remote_launch`` will return new error codes
24 after read or write error on the pipe, instead of calling ``rte_panic``.
26 * eal: The ``rte_logs`` struct and global symbol will be made private to
27 remove it from the externally visible ABI and allow it to be updated in the
30 * rte_atomicNN_xxx: These APIs do not take memory order parameter. This does
31 not allow for writing optimized code for all the CPU architectures supported
32 in DPDK. DPDK will adopt C11 atomic operations semantics and provide wrappers
33 using C11 atomic built-ins. These wrappers must be used for patches that
34 need to be merged in 20.08 onwards. This change will not introduce any
35 performance degradation.
37 * rte_smp_*mb: These APIs provide full barrier functionality. However, many
38 use cases do not require full barriers. To support such use cases, DPDK will
39 adopt C11 barrier semantics and provide wrappers using C11 atomic built-ins.
40 These wrappers must be used for patches that need to be merged in 20.08
41 onwards. This change will not introduce any performance degradation.
43 * igb_uio: In the view of reducing the kernel dependency from the main tree,
44 as a first step, the Technical Board decided to move ``igb_uio``
45 kernel module to the dpdk-kmods repository in the /linux/igb_uio/ directory
47 Minutes of Technical Board Meeting of `2019-11-06
48 <https://mails.dpdk.org/archives/dev/2019-November/151763.html>`_.
50 * lib: will fix extending some enum/define breaking the ABI. There are multiple
51 samples in DPDK that enum/define terminated with a ``.*MAX.*`` value which is
52 used by iterators, and arrays holding these values are sized with this
53 ``.*MAX.*`` value. So extending this enum/define increases the ``.*MAX.*``
54 value which increases the size of the array and depending on how/where the
55 array is used this may break the ABI.
56 ``RTE_ETH_FLOW_MAX`` is one sample of the mentioned case, adding a new flow
57 type will break the ABI because of ``flex_mask[RTE_ETH_FLOW_MAX]`` array
58 usage in following public struct hierarchy:
59 ``rte_eth_fdir_flex_conf -> rte_fdir_conf -> rte_eth_conf (in the middle)``.
60 Need to identify this kind of usages and fix in 20.11, otherwise this blocks
61 us extending existing enum/define.
62 One solution can be using a fixed size array instead of ``.*MAX.*`` value.
64 * ethdev: Split the ``struct eth_dev_ops`` struct to hide it as much as possible
65 will be done in 20.11.
66 Currently the ``struct eth_dev_ops`` struct is accessible by the application
67 because some inline functions, like ``rte_eth_tx_descriptor_status()``,
68 access the struct directly.
69 The struct will be separate in two, the ops used by inline functions will be
70 moved next to Rx/Tx burst functions, rest of the ``struct eth_dev_ops`` struct
71 will be moved to header file for drivers to hide it from applications.
73 * ethdev: the legacy filter API, including
74 ``rte_eth_dev_filter_supported()``, ``rte_eth_dev_filter_ctrl()`` as well
75 as filter types MACVLAN, ETHERTYPE, FLEXIBLE, SYN, NTUPLE, TUNNEL, FDIR,
76 HASH and L2_TUNNEL, is superseded by the generic flow API (rte_flow) in
77 PMDs that implement the latter.
78 Target release for removal of the legacy API will be defined once most
79 PMDs have switched to rte_flow.
81 * ethdev: Update API functions returning ``void`` to return ``int`` with
82 negative errno values to indicate various error conditions (e.g.
83 invalid port ID, unsupported operation, failed operation):
85 - ``rte_eth_dev_stop``
86 - ``rte_eth_dev_close``
88 * ethdev: New offload flags ``DEV_RX_OFFLOAD_FLOW_MARK`` will be added in 19.11.
89 This will allow application to enable or disable PMDs from updating
90 ``rte_mbuf::hash::fdir``.
91 This scheme will allow PMDs to avoid writes to ``rte_mbuf`` fields on Rx and
92 thereby improve Rx performance if application wishes do so.
93 In 19.11 PMDs will still update the field even when the offload is not
96 * ethdev: ``rx_descriptor_done`` dev_ops and ``rte_eth_rx_descriptor_done``
97 will be deprecated in 20.11 and will be removed in 21.11.
98 Existing ``rte_eth_rx_descriptor_status`` and ``rte_eth_tx_descriptor_status``
99 APIs can be used as replacement.
101 * traffic manager: All traffic manager API's in ``rte_tm.h`` were mistakenly made
102 ABI stable in the v19.11 release. The TM maintainer and other contributors have
103 agreed to keep the TM APIs as experimental in expectation of additional spec
104 improvements. Therefore, all APIs in ``rte_tm.h`` will be marked back as
105 experimental in v20.11 DPDK release. For more details, please see `the thread
106 <https://mails.dpdk.org/archives/dev/2020-April/164970.html>`_.
108 * cryptodev: support for using IV with all sizes is added, J0 still can
109 be used but only when IV length in following structs ``rte_crypto_auth_xform``,
110 ``rte_crypto_aead_xform`` is set to zero. When IV length is greater or equal
111 to one it means it represents IV, when is set to zero it means J0 is used
112 directly, in this case 16 bytes of J0 need to be passed.
114 * sched: To allow more traffic classes, flexible mapping of pipe queues to
115 traffic classes, and subport level configuration of pipes and queues
116 changes will be made to macros, data structures and API functions defined
117 in "rte_sched.h". These changes are aligned to improvements suggested in the
118 RFC https://mails.dpdk.org/archives/dev/2018-November/120035.html.
120 * metrics: The function ``rte_metrics_init`` will have a non-void return
121 in order to notify errors instead of calling ``rte_exit``.
123 * power: ``rte_power_set_env`` function will no longer return 0 on attempt
124 to set new power environment if power environment was already initialized.
125 In this case the function will return -1 unless the environment is unset first
126 (using ``rte_power_unset_env``). Other function usage scenarios will not change.
128 * python: Since the beginning of 2020, Python 2 has officially reached
129 end-of-support: https://www.python.org/doc/sunset-python-2/.
130 Python 2 support will be completely removed in 20.11.
131 In 20.08, explicit deprecation warnings will be displayed when running
132 scripts with Python 2.