Deprecation Notices
-------------------
-* The following fields have been deprecated in rte_eth_stats:
- ibadcrc, ibadlen, imcasts, fdirmatch, fdirmiss,
- tx_pause_xon, rx_pause_xon, tx_pause_xoff, rx_pause_xoff
+* The log history is deprecated.
+ It is voided in 16.07 and will be removed in release 16.11.
-* The scheduler statistics structure will change to allow keeping track of
- RED actions.
+* The ethdev hotplug API is going to be moved to EAL with a notification
+ mechanism added to crypto and ethdev libraries so that hotplug is now
+ available to both of them. This API will be stripped of the device arguments
+ so that it only cares about hotplugging.
-* librte_pipeline: The prototype for the pipeline input port, output port
- and table action handlers will be updated:
- the pipeline parameter will be added, the packets mask parameter will be
- either removed (for input port action handler) or made input-only.
+* Structures embodying pci and vdev devices are going to be reworked to
+ integrate new common rte_device / rte_driver objects (see
+ http://dpdk.org/ml/archives/dev/2016-January/031390.html).
+ ethdev and crypto libraries will then only handle those objects so that they
+ do not need to care about the kind of devices that are being used, making it
+ easier to add new buses later.
+
+* The xstats API and rte_eth_xstats struct will be changed to allow retrieval
+ of values without any string copies or parsing.
+ No backwards compatibility is planned, as it would require code duplication
+ in every PMD that supports xstats.
+
+* ABI changes are planned for adding four new flow types. This impacts
+ RTE_ETH_FLOW_MAX. The release 2.2 does not contain these ABI changes,
+ but release 2.3 will. [postponed]
+
+* ABI will change for rte_mempool struct to move the cache-related fields
+ to the more appropriate rte_mempool_cache struct. The mempool API is
+ also changed to enable external cache management that is not tied to EAL
+ threads. Some mempool get and put calls are removed in favor of a more
+ compact API. The ones that remain are backwards compatible and use the
+ per-lcore default cache if available. This change targets release 16.07.
+
+* The rte_mempool struct will be changed in 16.07 to facilitate the new
+ external mempool manager functionality.
+ The ring element will be replaced with a more generic 'pool' opaque pointer
+ to allow new mempool handlers to use their own user-defined mempool
+ layout. Also newly added to rte_mempool is a handler index.
+ The existing API will be backward compatible, but there will be new API
+ functions added to facilitate the creation of mempools using an external
+ handler. The 16.07 release will contain these changes.
+
+* A librte_vhost public structures refactor is planned for DPDK 16.07
+ that requires both ABI and API change.
+ The proposed refactor would expose DPDK vhost dev to applications as
+ a handle, like the way kernel exposes an fd to user for locating a
+ specific file, and to keep all major structures internally, so that
+ we are likely to be free from ABI violations in future.
+
+* The mbuf flags PKT_RX_VLAN_PKT and PKT_RX_QINQ_PKT are deprecated and
+ are respectively replaced by PKT_RX_VLAN_STRIPPED and
+ PKT_RX_QINQ_STRIPPED, that are better described. The old flags and
+ their behavior will be kept in 16.07 and will be removed in 16.11.