Subject: Re: [net-next 07/20] igb: add a character device to support AVB

From: Jeff Kirsher <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 24 Feb 2016 13:50:53 -0800

On Wed, 2016-02-24 at 16:45 -0500, David Miller wrote:
> From: Or Gerlitz <[email-masked]>
> Date: Wed, 24 Feb 2016 22:06:25 +0200
> 
> > On Wed, Feb 24, 2016 at 6:26 AM, Jeff Kirsher
> > <[email-masked]> wrote:
> >> From: Gangfeng Huang <[email-masked]>
> > 
> >> This patch create a character device for Intel I210 Ethernet
> controller,
> > 
> > wait, do we want L2 network driver to create char devices
> > 
> >> it can be used for developing Audio/Video Bridging
> applications,Industrial
> >> Ethernet applications which require precise timing control over
> frame
> >> transmission, or test harnesses for measuring system latencies and
> sampling
> >> events.
> > 
> > for various reasons such as the above?
> 
> This is definitely not the direction to go for such a facility.
> Character devices make no sense at all, and are an invitation for
> ad-hoc user interfaces for what should be a generic and clean
> facility.
> 
> There is no reason we cannot provide this facility with extensions
> of traditional networking APIs such as netlink or recvmsg/sendmsg
> over a raw or AF_PACKET socket.
> 
> If there has been a lot of work, time and effort put into this
> character device solution then that's too bad.  Because anything that
> ends up being user facing should have been proposed here on netdev
> from the start.
> 
> I'm not applying this, no way.

Thanks Dave, I will drop this and the associated patches from the
series.