netdev - Re: [PATCH] ethtool: ETHTOOL_SFEATURES: remove NETIF_F

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Date:	Wed, 18 May 2011 20:02:59 +0100
From:	Ben Hutchings <bhutchings@...arflare.com>
To:	Michał Mirosław <mirq-linux@...e.qmqm.pl>
Cc:	netdev@...r.kernel.org, David Miller <davem@...emloft.net>
Subject: Re: [PATCH] ethtool: ETHTOOL_SFEATURES: remove NETIF_F_COMPAT
 return

On Mon, 2011-05-16 at 23:09 +0100, Ben Hutchings wrote:
> On Mon, 2011-05-16 at 23:50 +0200, Michał Mirosław wrote:
> > On Mon, May 16, 2011 at 10:08:59PM +0100, Ben Hutchings wrote:
[...]
> > > I've explained before that I do not want to add new options to do
> > > (mostly) the same thing.  Users should have not have to use a different
> > > command depending on the kernel version.
> > 
> > We can avoid new option by checking feature-strings for unrecognised
> > arguments to -K. This way, we will have the old options which work
> > regardless of kernel version ('tx', 'rx', 'sg', etc.) and new options
> > which need recent kernel anyway (separated 'tx-checksum-*', 'loopback',
> > others coming in for 2.6.40).
> 
> This is just too subtle a distinction.  It will mostly confuse users.
[...]

Sorry, I think I misunderstood you here.  I agree that new feature names
that do not correspond exactly to existing keywords should be supported
as keywords after the -K option.  I think those that do (e.g.
"tx-udp-fragmentation" vs "ufo") should not be, as adding a
kernel-version-dependent *alias* would be confusing.

I also want users to benefit from your improvements (as I explained
above) even when they use the old names, if they are using a new kernel
version.  That is why I want ethtool to try using ETHTOOL_SFEATURES
first, and why the fallback in the kernel is problematic.

Ben.

-- 
Ben Hutchings, Senior Software Engineer, Solarflare
Not speaking for my employer; that's the marketing department's job.
They asked us to note that Solarflare product names are trademarked.

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