On 11/29/22 6:02 PM, Jakub Kicinski wrote:

On Tue, 29 Nov 2022 09:57:25 -0800 Shannon Nelson wrote:

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Yes, a PF representor simply so we can get access to the .ndo_set_vf_xxx
interfaces.  There is no network traffic running through the PF.

In that case not only have you come up with your own name for
a SmartNIC, you also managed to misuse one of our existing terms
in your own way! It can't pass any traffic it's just a dummy to hook
the legacy vf ndos to. It's the opposite of what a repr is.

Sorry, this seemed to me an reasonable use of the term.  Is there an
alternative wording we should use for this case?

Are there other existing methods we can use for getting the VF
configurations from the user, or does this make sense to keep in our
current simple model?

Enough back and forth. I'm not going to come up with a special model
just for you when a model already exists, and you present no technical
argument against it.

I am against merging your code, if you want to override find other
vendors and senior upstream reviewers who will side with you.

We're not asking for a special model, just to use the PF interface to 
configure VFs as has been the practice in the past.

Anyway, this feature can wait and we can work out alternatives later. 
For now, we'll drop the netdev portion from the driver and rework the 
other bits as discussed in other messages.  I'll likely have a v2 for 
comments sometime next week.

Thanks for your help,
sln