Subject: Re: [PATCH net-next v5 00/14] net: intel: start The Great Code Dedup + Page Pool for iavf

From: Jiri Pirko <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 27 Nov 2023 10:04:58 +0100

Fri, Nov 24, 2023 at 04:47:18PM CET, [email-masked] wrote:
>Here's a two-shot: introduce Intel Ethernet common library (libie) and
>switch iavf to Page Pool. Details are in the commit messages; here's
>a summary:
>
>Not a secret there's a ton of code duplication between two and more Intel
>ethernet modules. Before introducing new changes, which would need to be
>copied over again, start decoupling the already existing duplicate
>functionality into a new module, which will be shared between several
>Intel Ethernet drivers. The first name that came to my mind was
>"libie" -- "Intel Ethernet common library". Also this sounds like
>"lovelie" (-> one word, no "lib I E" pls) and can be expanded as
>"lib Internet Explorer" :P
>The series is only the beginning. From now on, adding every new feature
>or doing any good driver refactoring will remove much more lines than add
>for quite some time. There's a basic roadmap with some deduplications
>planned already, not speaking of that touching every line now asks:
>"can I share this?". The final destination is very ambitious: have only
>one unified driver for at least i40e, ice, iavf, and idpf with a struct
>ops for each generation. That's never gonna happen, right? But you still
>can at least try.
>PP conversion for iavf lands within the same series as these two are tied
>closely. libie will support Page Pool model only, so that a driver can't
>use much of the lib until it's converted. iavf is only the example, the
>rest will eventually be converted soon on a per-driver basis. That is
>when it gets really interesting. Stay tech.

The world would not be the same without intel driver duplicates :/

Out of curiosity, what changed? I always thought this is
done for sake of easier out of tree driver development and old device
support dropping.