On Tue, 14 Aug 2012 23:33:44 +0100
Ben Hutchings [off-list ref] wrote:

On Tue, 2012-08-14 at 17:05 +0200, Jiri Pirko wrote:

quoted

This lists are supposed to serve for storing pointers to all upper devices.
Eventually it will replace dev->master pointer which is used for
bonding, bridge, team but it cannot be used for vlan, macvlan where
there might be multiple upper present. In case the upper link is
replacement for dev->master, it is marked with "master" flag.

Something I found interesting is that the dev->master pointer and now
netdev_master_upper_dev_get{,_rcu}() are hardly used by the stackled
drivers that set the master.  They also have to set an rx_handler on the
lower device (which is itself mutually exclusive) which gets its own
context pointer (rx_handler_data).

Instead, the master pointer is mostly used by device drivers to find out
about a bridge or bonding device above *their* devices.  And that seems
to work only for those specific device drivers, not e.g. openvswitch or
team.  I wonder if we could find a better way to encapsulate the things
they want do do, in a later step (not holding up this change!).

The concept is master is very useful to user level config things like
Vyatta for seeing parent/child relationship. Since is in ABI now, it
must stay.