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

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Message-ID: <20110519091833.GA24484@rere.qmqm.pl>
Date:	Thu, 19 May 2011 11:18:33 +0200
From:	Michał Mirosław <mirq-linux@...e.qmqm.pl>
To:	Ben Hutchings <bhutchings@...arflare.com>
Cc:	netdev@...r.kernel.org, David Miller <davem@...emloft.net>
Subject: Re: [PATCH] ethtool: ETHTOOL_SFEATURES: remove NETIF_F_COMPAT
 return

On Wed, May 18, 2011 at 08:02:59PM +0100, Ben Hutchings wrote:
> 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.

The alias can be marked as such in the documentation. Shouldn't it be
that hard for a user to read the manpage to know what the new options
are for when he sees them. I don't like the idea of translating strings,
either, because if e.g. ufo becomes split in the feature to ufo4+ufo6
or new checksum offloads are implemented, it will break.

> 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.

Which benefits do you want to have? If checking what other features
changed with selected one, it's easily done by rereading the state -
possibly with GFEATURES.

I'll cook another PoC patch over those I sent to show the idea.

Best Regards,
Michał Mirosław
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