Re: [PATCH V4 0/5] mlx5 ConnectX control misc driver

[David Ahern]

On 3/22/24 4:40 PM, Jakub Kicinski wrote:
> On Fri, 22 Mar 2024 15:18:09 -0600 David Ahern wrote:
>> can you respond to Jason's email with the proposal for the new fwctl
>> subsystem and identify places you do not agree? That would provide more
>> concrete discussion points. Thanks,
> 
> Respond in what way, David? Comment on technical aspects of whether 
> a common class device with a discovery mechanism and a sprinkling of
> semantically meaningless fields can be implemented? Some trivial object
> hierarchy?
> 
> On whether someone can actually enforce any of the 4 "don't"s, and
> whether this interface is basically encouraging and giving a leg up
> to those willing to be dishonest?
> 
> Or should we go for another loop of me talking about openness and
> building common abstractions, and vendors saying how their way of
> doing basic configuration is so very special, and this is just for
> debug and security and because others.
> 
> There's absolutely no willingness to try and build a common interface
> here.

The proposal is an attempt at a common interface and common tooling to a
degree but independent of any specific subsystem of which many are
supported by the device.

Your responses continue to align with the notion that because the device
can spit out ethernet frames, all diagnostics, debugging, configuration,
etc. MUST go through networking APIs.

You seem unwilling to acknowledge that devices can work for various use
cases without a netdev driver, and thus aspects of managing that device
should be done outside of a netdev driver.