Subject: Re: [PATCH net-next V3] net: ena: Add a driver for Amazon Elastic Network Adapters (ENA)

From: Leon Romanovsky <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 15 Jul 2016 18:47:48 +0300

On Fri, Jul 15, 2016 at 08:17:59AM -0700, Benjamin Poirier wrote:
> On 2016/07/15 08:00, Leon Romanovsky wrote:
> > On Thu, Jul 14, 2016 at 09:46:14AM +0300, Netanel Belgazal wrote:
> > > This is a driver for the ENA family of networking devices.
> > > 
> > > Signed-off-by: Netanel Belgazal <[email-masked]>
> > > ---
> > > 
> > > Notes:
> > 
> > ...
> > 
> > >     - Increase driver version to 1.0.2
> > 
> > ...
> > 
> > > +static void ena_get_drvinfo(struct net_device *dev,
> > > +			    struct ethtool_drvinfo *info)
> > > +{
> > > +	struct ena_adapter *adapter = netdev_priv(dev);
> > > +
> > > +	strlcpy(info->driver, DRV_MODULE_NAME, sizeof(info->driver));
> > > +	strlcpy(info->version, DRV_MODULE_VERSION, sizeof(info->version));
> > 
> > Does module version give anything valuable in real life usage?
> > Do you plan to bump version after every patch?
> > 
> > Hint, NO.
> > 
> [...]
> > > +
> > > +#define DRV_MODULE_VER_MAJOR	1
> > > +#define DRV_MODULE_VER_MINOR	0
> > > +#define DRV_MODULE_VER_SUBMINOR 1
> > > +
> > > +#define DRV_MODULE_NAME		"ena"
> > > +#ifndef DRV_MODULE_VERSION
> > > +#define DRV_MODULE_VERSION \
> > > +	__stringify(DRV_MODULE_VER_MAJOR) "."	\
> > > +	__stringify(DRV_MODULE_VER_MINOR) "."	\
> > > +	__stringify(DRV_MODULE_VER_SUBMINOR)
> > > +#endif
> > > +#define DRV_MODULE_RELDATE      "22-JUNE-2016"
> > 
> > Please remove it, driver version is useless in real life kernel usage.
> > 
> 
> The release date might be a bit overkill but the driver version is
> useful in the context of distribution kernels where users sometimes mix
> and match newer drivers (ex: the intel sf.net drivers) with older
> kernels. When a bug is reported, a quick look at the module version can
> help indicate the provenance of the driver.

We already discussed it in a number of occasions, for example this is
response of Greg Kroah-Hartman to similar attempt to bump driver version
[1].

And as I said before, mostly this driver will change without any
reflection in driver version.

[1] http://www.spinics.net/lists/linux-rdma/msg29855.html