-* eal: both declaring and identifying devices will be streamlined in v18.11.
- New functions will appear to query a specific port from buses, classes of
- device and device drivers. Device declaration will be made coherent with the
- new scheme of device identification.
- As such, ``rte_devargs`` device representation will change.
-
- - The enum ``rte_devtype`` was used to identify a bus and will disappear.
- - Functions previously deprecated will change or disappear:
-
- + ``rte_eal_devargs_type_count``
-
-* vfio: removal of ``rte_vfio_dma_map`` and ``rte_vfio_dma_unmap`` APIs which
- have been replaced with ``rte_dev_dma_map`` and ``rte_dev_dma_unmap``
- functions. The due date for the removal targets DPDK 20.02.
-
-* dpaa2: removal of ``rte_dpaa2_memsegs`` structure which has been replaced
- by a pa-va search library. This structure was earlier being used for holding
- memory segments used by dpaa2 driver for faster pa->va translation. This
- structure would be made internal (or removed if all dependencies are cleared)
- in future releases.
-
-* net: The Ethernet address and header definitions will change
- attributes. The Ethernet address struct will no longer be marked as
- packed since the packed attribute is meaningless on a byte
- array. The Ethernet header will be marked as aligned on a 2-byte
- boundary and will no longer have the packed attribute. This allows
- for efficient access on CPU architectures where unaligned access is
- expensive. These changes should not impact normal usage because drivers
- naturally align the Ethernet header on receive and all known
- encapsulations preserve the alignment of the header.
-
-* ethdev: The function ``rte_eth_dev_count`` will be removed in DPDK 20.02.
- It is replaced by the function ``rte_eth_dev_count_avail``.
- If the intent is to iterate over ports, ``RTE_ETH_FOREACH_*`` macros
- are better port iterators.
+* rte_atomicNN_xxx: These APIs do not take memory order parameter. This does
+ not allow for writing optimized code for all the CPU architectures supported
+ in DPDK. DPDK will adopt C11 atomic operations semantics and provide wrappers
+ using C11 atomic built-ins. These wrappers must be used for patches that
+ need to be merged in 20.08 onwards. This change will not introduce any
+ performance degradation.
+
+* rte_smp_*mb: These APIs provide full barrier functionality. However, many
+ use cases do not require full barriers. To support such use cases, DPDK will
+ adopt C11 barrier semantics and provide wrappers using C11 atomic built-ins.
+ These wrappers must be used for patches that need to be merged in 20.08
+ onwards. This change will not introduce any performance degradation.
+
+* lib: will fix extending some enum/define breaking the ABI. There are multiple
+ samples in DPDK that enum/define terminated with a ``.*MAX.*`` value which is
+ used by iterators, and arrays holding these values are sized with this
+ ``.*MAX.*`` value. So extending this enum/define increases the ``.*MAX.*``
+ value which increases the size of the array and depending on how/where the
+ array is used this may break the ABI.
+ ``RTE_ETH_FLOW_MAX`` is one sample of the mentioned case, adding a new flow
+ type will break the ABI because of ``flex_mask[RTE_ETH_FLOW_MAX]`` array
+ usage in following public struct hierarchy:
+ ``rte_eth_fdir_flex_conf -> rte_fdir_conf -> rte_eth_conf (in the middle)``.
+ Need to identify this kind of usages and fix in 20.11, otherwise this blocks
+ us extending existing enum/define.
+ One solution can be using a fixed size array instead of ``.*MAX.*`` value.
+
+* mbuf: Some fields will be converted to dynamic API in DPDK 20.11
+ in order to reserve more space for the dynamic fields, as explained in
+ `this presentation <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ttl6MlhmzWY>`_.
+ The following static fields will be moved as dynamic:
+
+ - ``timestamp``
+ - ``userdata`` / ``udata64``
+ - ``seqn``
+
+ As a consequence, the layout of the ``struct rte_mbuf`` will be re-arranged,
+ avoiding impact on vectorized implementation of the driver datapaths,
+ while evaluating performance gains of a better use of the first cache line.
+