Subject: Re: [RFC PATCH net-next 6/7] net: ethtool: add a netlink command to get PHY information

From: Maxime Chevallier <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 14 Sep 2023 11:36:13 +0200

Hello Jakub,

On Fri, 8 Sep 2023 08:46:06 -0700
Jakub Kicinski <[email-masked]> wrote:

> On Thu,  7 Sep 2023 11:24:04 +0200 Maxime Chevallier wrote:
> >  	ETHTOOL_MSG_PHY_LIST_GET,
> > +	ETHTOOL_MSG_PHY_GET,  
> 
> The distinction between LIST_GET and GET is a bit odd for netlink.
> GET has a do and a dump. The dump is effectively LIST_GET.
> 
> The dump can accept filtering arguments, like ifindex, if you want 
> to narrow down the results, that's perfectly fine (you may need to
> give up some of the built-in ethtool scaffolding, but it shouldn't 
> be all that bad).

I'm currently implementing this, and I was wondering if it could be
worth it to include a pointer to struct phy_device directly in
ethnl_req_info.

This would share the logic for all netlink commands that target a
phy_device :

 - plca
 - pse-pd
 - cabletest
 - other future commands

Do you see this as acceptable ? we would grab the phy_device that
matches the passed phy_index in the request, and if none is specified,
we default to dev->phydev.

Thanks,

Maxime