Deprecation Notices
-------------------
-* Significant ABI changes are planned for struct rte_eth_dev to support up to
- 1024 queues per port. This change will be in release 2.2.
- There is no backward compatibility planned from release 2.2.
- All binaries will need to be rebuilt from release 2.2.
-
-* The Macros RTE_HASH_BUCKET_ENTRIES_MAX and RTE_HASH_KEY_LENGTH_MAX are
- deprecated and will be removed with version 2.2.
-
-* The function rte_jhash2 is deprecated and should be removed.
-
-* The following fields have been deprecated in rte_eth_stats:
- imissed, ibadcrc, ibadlen, imcasts, fdirmatch, fdirmiss,
- tx_pause_xon, rx_pause_xon, tx_pause_xoff, rx_pause_xoff
-
-* API for flow director filters has been replaced by rte_eth_dev_filter_ctrl.
- Following old API is deprecated and will be removed with version 2.2 without
- backward compatibility.
- Functions: rte_eth_dev_fdir_*.
- Structures: rte_fdir_*, rte_eth_fdir.
- Enums: rte_l4type, rte_iptype.
-
-* ABI changes are planned for struct rte_eth_fdir_flow_ext in order to support
- flow director filtering in VF. The release 2.1 does not contain these ABI
- changes, but release 2.2 will, and no backwards compatibility is planned.
-
-* ABI changes are planned for struct rte_eth_fdir_filter and
- rte_eth_fdir_masks in order to support new flow director modes,
- MAC VLAN and Cloud, on x550. The MAC VLAN mode means the MAC and
- VLAN are monitored. The Cloud mode is for VxLAN and NVGRE, and
- the tunnel type, TNI/VNI, inner MAC and inner VLAN are monitored.
- The release 2.2 will contain these changes without backwards compatibility.
-
-* librte_kni: Functions based on port id are deprecated for a long time and
- should be removed (rte_kni_create, rte_kni_get_port_id and rte_kni_info_get).
-
-* librte_pmd_ring: The deprecated functions rte_eth_ring_pair_create and
- rte_eth_ring_pair_attach should be removed.
-
-* ABI changes are planned for struct virtio_net in order to support vhost-user
- multiple queues feature.
- It should be integrated in release 2.2 without backward compatibility.
-
-* The scheduler hierarchy structure (rte_sched_port_hierarchy) will change to
- allow for a larger number of subport entries.
- The number of available traffic_classes and queues may also change.
- The mbuf structure element for sched hierarchy will also change from a single
- 32 bit to a 64 bit structure.
-
-* The scheduler statistics structure will change to allow keeping track of
- RED actions.
-
-* librte_acl: The structure rte_acl_ipv4vlan_rule is deprecated and should
- be removed as well as the associated functions rte_acl_ipv4vlan_add_rules
- and rte_acl_ipv4vlan_build.
-
-* librte_cfgfile: In order to allow for longer names and values,
- the value of macros CFG_NAME_LEN and CFG_NAME_VAL will be increased.
- Most likely, the new values will be 64 and 256, respectively.
-
-* librte_port: Macros to access the packet meta-data stored within the
- packet buffer will be adjusted to cover the packet mbuf structure as well,
- as currently they are able to access any packet buffer location except the
- packet mbuf structure.
-
-* librte_table LPM: A new parameter to hold the table name will be added to
- the LPM table parameter structure.
-
-* librte_table: New functions for table entry bulk add/delete will be added
- to the table operations structure.
-
-* librte_table hash: Key mask parameter will be added to the hash table
- parameter structure for 8-byte key and 16-byte key extendible bucket and
- LRU tables.
-
-* 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.
+* 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.
+
+* 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.
+
+* ABI changes are planned for struct rte_pci_id, i.e., add new field ``class``.
+ This new added ``class`` field can be used to probe pci device by class
+ related info. This change should impact size of struct rte_pci_id and struct
+ rte_pci_device. The release 16.04 does not contain these ABI changes, but
+ release 16.07 will.
+
+* 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.