Subject: [RFC] netdevice ops

From: Stephen Hemminger <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 17 May 2007 21:07:37 -0700

I want to take all the function pointers of 'struct net_device' and
move them to 'struct net_device_ops'. This will save memory for the
case of lots of devices, as well as reduce initialization code.

Rough plan:
1. Introduce inline accessors so protocols don't dereference dev->XXX directly.
2. Fix protocols to use #1
3. Add ops field to net_device, and netdevice_register will fill in old values
   in 'struct net_device'.
4...1300 Fix all network devices to use ops field
1301 Change accessors to use ops, get rid of old 'struct net_device' function pointers.

It isn't rocket science just another code exercise. I'll patch bomb it into something
like 2.6.23-mm first.

This should really help the people who like to do 1000's of vlans etc.