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Date:   Tue, 19 Feb 2019 13:27:14 +0100
From:   Jiri Pirko <jiri@resnulli.us>
To:     Michal Kubecek <mkubecek@suse.cz>
Cc:     netdev@vger.kernel.org, David Miller <davem@davemloft.net>,
        Andrew Lunn <andrew@lunn.ch>,
        Jakub Kicinski <jakub.kicinski@netronome.com>,
        linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
Subject: Re: [RFC PATCH net-next v3 00/21] ethtool netlink interface, part 1
Message-ID: <20190219122714.GE3080@nanopsycho>
References: <cover.1550513384.git.mkubecek@suse.cz>
 <20190219103508.GD3080@nanopsycho>
 <20190219115727.GE23151@unicorn.suse.cz>
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Tue, Feb 19, 2019 at 12:57:27PM CET, mkubecek@suse.cz wrote:
>On Tue, Feb 19, 2019 at 11:35:08AM +0100, Jiri Pirko wrote:
>> >- some features provided by ethtool would rather belong to devlink (and
>> >  some are already superseded by devlink); however, only few drivers
>> >  provide devlink interface at the moment and as recent discussion on
>> >  flashing revealed, we cannot rely on devlink's presence
>> 
>> Could you explain why please?
>
>What I mean is the problem discussed under Jakub's devlink flash
>patchset: that he couldn't implement only the devlink callback in nfp
>and rely on the generic fallback to devlink because it wouldn't work if
>devlink is built as a module.

So let's fix that.


>
>But I think this should be addressed. If we agree that flashing (and
>other features provided by ethtool at the moment) rather belongs to
>devlink (which nobody seems to oppose), we should rather try to make it
>possible for drivers to provide only the devlink callback and gradually
>move all in-tree drivers to doing so. (And one day, remove it from
>ethtool_ops.) It doesn't seem to make much sense to have devlink as
>a module in such scenario.

Agreed.

>
>Michal