Re: [PATCH net-next v1 0/5] Devlink reload and missed notifications fix

[Jakub Kicinski]

On Wed, 29 Sep 2021 18:31:51 +0300 Leon Romanovsky wrote:
> On Wed, Sep 29, 2021 at 07:39:40AM -0700, Jakub Kicinski wrote:
> > On Wed, 29 Sep 2021 17:13:28 +0300 Leon Romanovsky wrote:  
> > > We don't need to advertise counters for feature that is not supported.
> > > In multiport mlx5 devices, the reload functionality is not supported, so
> > > this change at least make that device to behave like all other netdev
> > > devices that don't support devlink reload.
> > > 
> > > The ops structure is set very early to make sure that internal devlink
> > > routines will be able access driver back during initialization (btw very
> > > questionable design choice)  
> > 
> > Indeed, is this fixable? Or now that devlink_register() was moved to 
> > the end of probe netdev can call ops before instance is registered?
> >   
> > > and at that stage the driver doesn't know
> > > yet which device type it is going to drive.
> > > 
> > > So the answer is:
> > > 1. Can't have two structures.  
> > 
> > I still don't understand why. To be clear - swapping full op structures
> > is probably acceptable if it's a pure upgrade (existing pointers match).
> > Poking new ops into a structure (in alphabetical order if I understand
> > your reply to Greg, not destructor-before-contructor) is what I deem
> > questionable.  
> 
> It is sorted simply for readability and not for any other technical
> reason.
> 
> Regarding new ops, this is how we are setting callbacks in RDMA based on
> actual device support. It works like a charm.
> 
> > > 2. Same behaviour across all netdev devices.  
> > 
> > Unclear what this is referring to.  
> 
> If your device doesn't support devlink reload, it won't print any
> reload counters at all. It is not the case for the multiport mlx5
> device. It doesn't support, but still present these counters.

There's myriad ways you can hide features.

Swapping ops is heavy handed and prone to data races, I don't like it.