Stephen Hemminger [off-list ref] writes:

On Fri, 27 Jan 2017 16:47:40 +0000
Bruce Richardson [off-list ref] wrote:

quoted

On Fri, Jan 27, 2017 at 08:33:46AM -0800, Stephen Hemminger wrote:

quoted

On Fri, 27 Jan 2017 09:57:03 -0500
Aaron Conole [off-list ref] wrote:
  

quoted

diff --git a/lib/librte_eal/common/include/rte_eal.h b/lib/librte_eal/common/include/rte_eal.h
index 03fee50..46e427f 100644
--- a/lib/librte_eal/common/include/rte_eal.h
+++ b/lib/librte_eal/common/include/rte_eal.h

@@ -159,7 +159,29 @@ int rte_eal_iopl_init(void);
  *     function call and should not be further interpreted by the
  *     application.  The EAL does not take any ownership of the memory used
  *     for either the argv array, or its members.
- *   - On failure, a negative error value.
+ *   - On failure, -1 and rte_errno is set to a value indicating the cause
+ *     for failure.
+ *
+ *   The error codes returned via rte_errno:
+ *     EACCES indicates a permissions issue.
+ *
+ *     EAGAIN indicates either a bus or system resource was not available,
+ *            try again.
+ *
+ *     EALREADY indicates that the rte_eal_init function has already been
+ *              called, and cannot be called again.
+ *
+ *     EINVAL indicates invalid parameters were passed as argv/argc.
+ *
+ *     EIO indicates failure to setup the logging handlers.  This is usually
+ *         caused by an out-of-memory condition.
+ *
+ *     ENODEV indicates memory setup issues.
+ *
+ *     ENOTSUP indicates that the EAL cannot initialize on this system.
+ *
+ *     EUNATCH indicates that the PCI bus is either not present, or is not
+ *             readable by the eal.
  */
 int rte_eal_init(int argc, char **argv);  

Why use rte_errno?
Most DPDK calls just return negative value on error which
corresponds to error number.
Are you trying to keep ABI compatibility? Doesn't make sense
because before all these
errors were panic's no working application is going to care.  

Either will work, but I actually prefer this way. I view using rte_errno
to be better as it can work in just about all cases, including with
functions which return pointers. This allows you to have a standard
method across all functions for returning error codes, and it only
requires a single sentinal value to indicate error, rather than using a
whole range of values.

The problem is DPDK is getting more inconsistent on how this is done.
As long as error returns are always same as kernel/glibc errno's it really doesn't
matter much which way the value is returned from a technical point of view
but the inconsistency is sure to be a usability problem and source of errors.

I am using rte_errno here because I assumed it was the preferred
method.  In fact, looking at some recently contributed modules (for
instance pdump), it seems that folks are using it.

I'm not really sure the purpose of having rte_errno if it isn't used, so
it'd be helpful to know if there's some consensus on reflecting errors
via this variable, or on returning error codes.  Whichever is the more
consistent with the way the DPDK project does things, I'm game :).

Thanks for the thoughts, and review.