Subject: Re: [RFC RTNETLINK 00/09]: Netlink link creation API

From: [email-masked] (Eric W. Biederman)
Date: Wed, 06 Jun 2007 10:13:36 -0600

Patrick McHardy <[email-masked]> writes:

>> I still think adding a IFLA_PARTNER or a custom attribute is cleaner
>> in this case.  Slight semantic mismatches are the worst design bugs
>> to correct.
>
>
> Indeed, IFLA_PARTNER sounds like a better idea. I just suggested to
> Pavel to create only a single device per newlink operation and binding
> them later, what do you think about that?

I don't think it solves much because we still need a way to report the
partner device.

On the actual using side I think it makes the core of the driver much
more difficult to get right.  

Basically if we can't count on having a partner device we have to
add NULL pointer checks and locking to the packet dispatch which
is otherwise unnecessary.

Eric