netdev - Re: [PATCH v3 net-next 04/16] sfc_ef100: skeleton EF100 PF driver

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Message-ID: <699dfdba-558b-7068-8ea7-d10d80369b6b@solarflare.com>
Date:   Tue, 21 Jul 2020 18:09:13 +0100
From:   Edward Cree <ecree@...arflare.com>
To:     Jakub Kicinski <kuba@...nel.org>
CC:     <linux-net-drivers@...arflare.com>, <davem@...emloft.net>,
        "kernel test robot" <lkp@...el.com>, <kbuild-all@...ts.01.org>,
        <netdev@...r.kernel.org>
Subject: Re: [PATCH v3 net-next 04/16] sfc_ef100: skeleton EF100 PF driver

On 21/07/2020 17:45, Jakub Kicinski wrote:
> On Tue, 21 Jul 2020 15:48:00 +0100 Edward Cree wrote:
>> Aaaaargh; does anyone have any bright ideas?
> No bright ideas. Why do you want the driver to be modular in the first
> place?
Well, 'sfc' already is, and I'm not sure changing that is an option
 (wouldn't it break users' scripts?).  And I find development is a lot
 easier if you can just rebuild a module and reload it rather than
 having to wait for LD to put together a whole new vmlinux.

> Maybe I'm wrong, but I've never seen a reason to break up vendor drivers
> for high performance NICs into multiple modules.
So, what are you suggesting?
1) both drivers are builtin-only
2) a single module containing both drivers
3) something else?

Both (1) and (2) would allow replacing the linker trick with an if()
 on efx->revision or an efx->type-> function with INDIRECT_CALLABLE.

I don't know for sure but I suspect we made the drivers separate
 modules simply because we could (or so we thought) and we didn't
 know for certain no-one would ever want the extra flexibility.

I'll ask around and see if there's any reason we can't do (2).

-ed