[ofa-general] difference between flint and mstflint

[Vincent Ficet]

Hello,

While using mstflint to read the characteristics of an IS4 switch, it 
fails as follows:

[user at host ~ ] mstflint -d "lid-11" q
Unable to parse device name lid-11
*** ERROR *** Can not open lid-11: Invalid argument MFE_CR_ERROR

However, when I use flint, it works fine:

[user at host ~ ] flint -d "lid-11" q
Image type:      FS2
FW Version:      7.1.0
Device ID:       48438
Chip Revision:   A0
Description:     Node             Sys image
GUIDs:           0002c90200404798 0002c9020040479b
Board ID:         (MT_0C20110003)
VSD:            
PSID:            MT_0C20110003

Looking at the flint code (MFT 2.5) and the mstflint code (git head), 
there is no difference apart from the version ID for the following files:
- flint.cpp
- mflash.c
- mflash.h


Digging deeper into the issue I found that difference was that:

- mstflint uses the mopen() function implemented in mtcr.h. This 
function does not support the 'lid-' syntax

- flint uses the mopend() function implemented in a separate library 
(libmtcr.a) and supports the 'lid-' syntax.
This library is built using the files mtcr.c mtcr_ib.c mtcr_i2c.c 
usbioctl.c located in /usr/mst/src.

Why doesn't mstflint use the same library as flint (hence providing 
better functionnality for inband analysis), knowing that both flint and 
mstflint already share a fair amount of common code ?
Is there any plan to push the library and its corresponding source files 
into the mstflint git repository ?

Thanks for your help,

Vincent