[ewg] [PATCH v4] IB Core: RAW ETH support

[Steve Wise]

Roland Dreier wrote:
>  > I tested it before on the Roland tree ( iboe branch ) and it fails,
>  > because it writen in the way suitable for OFED. If adapt the patch to
>  > the Roland tree, then appling Mellanox OFED patches will fail, because
>  > it changes the same functions in the code.
>  > Here is one example:
>  > Look at __mlx4_ib_modify_qp at the Roland tree - there is no RAW_ETY
>  > support. But in the OFED version of the same function this support is
>  > present.
>  > RAW_ETH patch modify this function and looking for RAW_ETY word and
>  > without this RAW_ETH Mellanox patch will fail.
>
> Don't take this too personally -- I picked a semi-random email in this
> thread to reply to; this is pretty broadly targeted.
>
> <rant>
>
> What the hell is the thinking behind introducing IB_QPT_RAW_ETH?  You're
> inserting an enum value before IB_QPT_RAW_ETY, so any old userspace
> passing in IB_QPT_RAW_ETY will silently get different behavior depending
> on the kernel version.  And you're creating two constands that differ in
> a single letter (IB_QPT_RAW_ETY vs. IB_QPT_RAW_ETH).  How are you going
> to explain that to users?  How is anyone ever going to get it right?
> For that matter, what exactly does IB_QPT_RAW_ETH mean?
>
> This all seems to be a symptom of how broken our development process
> is.  Yes, unfortunately I can't spend as much time reviewing and
> applying patches as I might like, and I apologize for that.  But if we
> have all the RDMA developers piling up shit in their little area and
> then sending it on to be merged as soon as it kind of works, without
> thinking about design or maintainability and without ever doing any
> review, then I'm always going to have an expanding review backlog.
>
> And then we have OFED compounding problems -- "Oh that's a nice pile of
> shit you've built there.  We better ship it to users while it's still
> steaming."  How about if OFED developers take a little time to think
> things through?
>
> </rant>
>
> In other words, can someone explain the plan for this raw QP stuff to me?
>
>  - R.
>   


It doesn't even look like this patch and the mlx4 patch were ever posted 
to linux-rdma. Only to the EWG list.

Granted our dev process may not be documented, but I always assumed the 
general idea was to get changes accepted upstream, then pull into ofed. 
OFED is just a mechanism to make top-of-tree linux work on distro 
kernels. There are some exceptions, but this stuff shouldn't be an 
exception.

We should all follow this "upstream first" process IMO.

Steve.