[ofa-general] Re: [PATCH 0/2] Opensm support for external routing engines

[Sasha Khapyorsky]

Hi Nicolas,

On 07:44 Fri 19 Jun     , Nicolas Morey-Chaisemartin wrote:
> > 
> > Eventually it is only link list with names and callbacks. It should be
> > easy to add new entry there.
> > 
> I guess it could be done but are you sure the event plugin is loaded and set up before the routing engine ?

Yes.

> If it is, we could make the routing_engine list a bit more dynamic. However I'm not fully satisfied of the idea of inserting new engines through an "event" plugin.

This called "event" for historical reasons - now it is completely
generic plugin interface.

> We could also make this interface a bit more generic and provides the means to add new features around OpenSM more easily.

For example? Reload plugin on the fly? That is fine for me.

> 
> >> AFAIK, the latest Voltaire UFM also includes or will include proprietary
> >> routing algorithms (mesh + fat tree), so it could also be useful for
> >> Voltaire.
> > 
> > I don't know about this, but even if it is so. It is not our charter as
> > open source project to care about such practices and they (UFM) will need
> > to support their stuff by themselves.
> > 
> 
> Fair enough but the cost of this plugin is quite low in terms of code quantity, 
> so it shouldn't introduce too much trouble maintaning it.
> And as Ira, it reduces OpenSM dependencies for external algorithm. 
> Some of ours for example  rely on PostgreSQL drivers or libdbi, some own library (which uses libibnetdisc) and much more.

I understand such arguments, but up to now I didn't see any good reason
to have more than one plugin interface in OpenSM.

Sasha