On Wed, 2012-02-29 at 10:19 -0800, John Fastabend wrote:

quoted

I want to see a unified API so that user space control applications (RSTP, TRILL?)
can use one set of netlink calls for both software bridge and hardware offloaded
bridges.  Does this proposal meet that requirement?

I dont see any issues with those requirements being met.

Jamal, so why do "They have to be different calls"? I'm not so sure anymore...
moving to RTM_FDB_XXXENTRY saved some refactoring in the bridge module but that
is just cosmetic.

I may not want to use the s/ware bridge i.e I may want to use h/ware
bridge. I may want to use both. So there are 3 variations there. You
need at least 1.5 bits to represent them if you are going to use the
same interface. There may be features in either h/ware but not in
s/ware and vice-versa. 
A single interface with flags which say this applies to hware:sware:both
would be good, but it may be harder to achieve - thats why i suggested
they be different.

cheers,
jamal