Re: [RFC net-next] iavf: refactor plan proposal

On Mon, 8 Mar 2021 16:28:58 -0800 Jesse Brandeburg wrote:

Hello,

We plan to refactor the iavf module and would appreciate community and
maintainer feedback on our plans.  We want to do this to realize the
usefulness of the common code module for multiple drivers.  This
proposal aims to avoid disrupting current users.

The steps we plan are something like:
1) Continue upstreaming of the iecm module (common module) and
   the initial feature set for the idpf driver[1] utilizing iecm.

Oh, that's still going? there wasn't any revision for such a long time
I deleted my notes :-o

2) Introduce the refactored iavf code as a "new" iavf driver with the
   same device ID, but Kconfig default to =n to enable testing. 
	a. Make this exclusive so if someone opts in to "new" iavf,
	   then it disables the original iavf (?) 
	b. If we do make it exclusive in Kconfig can we use the same
	   name? 
3) Plan is to make the "new" iavf driver the default iavf once
   extensive regression testing can be completed. 
	a. Current proposal is to make CONFIG_IAVF have a sub-option
	   CONFIG_IAVF_V2 that lets the user adopt the new code,
	   without changing the config for existing users or breaking
	   them.

We are looking to make sure that the mode of our refactoring will meet
the community's expectations. Any advice or feedback is appreciated.

Sounds like a slow, drawn out process painful to everyone involved.

The driver is upstream. My humble preference is that Intel sends small
logical changes we can review, and preserve a meaningful git history.