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

From: Jakub Kicinski
Date: Mon Apr 01 2024 - 10:50:12 EST


On Mon, 1 Apr 2024 15:30:03 +0300 Leon Romanovsky wrote:
> > 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.
>
> HNS driver is a good example of such device. It has nothing to do with
> netdev and needs common and reliable way to configure FW.

Sorry, I have a completely different reading of that thread.
Thanks for bringing it up, tho.

As I said multiple times I agree that configuring custom parameters
in RDMA is a necessity. Junxian's approach of putting such code in
the RDMA driver / subsystem is more than reasonable. Even better,
it looks like the API is fairly narrowly defined.