Date: Fri, 9 Feb 2024 22:01:33 -0700
From: David Ahern <dsahern@...nel.org>
To: Jakub Kicinski <kuba@...nel.org>
Cc: Saeed Mahameed <saeed@...nel.org>, Arnd Bergmann <arnd@...db.de>,
 Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@...uxfoundation.org>,
 Leon Romanovsky <leonro@...dia.com>, Jason Gunthorpe <jgg@...dia.com>,
 Jiri Pirko <jiri@...dia.com>, Leonid Bloch <lbloch@...dia.com>,
 Itay Avraham <itayavr@...dia.com>, Saeed Mahameed <saeedm@...dia.com>,
 Aron Silverton <aron.silverton@...cle.com>,
 Christoph Hellwig <hch@...radead.org>, andrew.gospodarek@...adcom.com,
 linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org, netdev@...r.kernel.org
Subject: Re: [PATCH V4 0/5] mlx5 ConnectX control misc driver

On 2/9/24 3:58 PM, Jakub Kicinski wrote:
> On Fri, 9 Feb 2024 15:42:16 -0700 David Ahern wrote:
>> On 2/8/24 7:15 PM, Jakub Kicinski wrote:
>>>> I was in the room and I am in support of David's idea, I like it a lot,
>>>> but I don't believe we have any concrete proposal, and we don't have any
>>>> use case for it in netdev for now, our use case for this is currently RDMA
>>>> and HPC specific.
>>>>
>>>> Also siimilar to devlink we will be the first to jump in and implement
>>>> the new API once defined, but this doesn't mean I need to throw away the  
>>>
>>> I'm not asking to throw it away. The question is only whether you get
>>> to push it upstream and skirt subsystem rules by posting a "misc" driver
>>> without even CCing the maintainers on v1 :|  
>>
>> Can you define what you mean by 'skirt subsystem rules'? That's a new
>> one to me.
> 
> I mean that Saeed is well aware that direct FW <> user space interfaces
> are not allowed in netdev, so he posted this "misc" driver without
> CCing us, knowing we'd nack it.

The argument you are making here is that if a device has an ethernet
port, all patches must flow through netdev. Or am I misunderstanding?

There are a lot of devices that toggle between IB and ethernet with only
one (ignore roce here) active at a moment. MLX5 (like many) is split
between drivers/net and drivers/infinband. If the debugging capabilities
went through drivers/infiniband would you have the same stance?

Maybe my bigger question is should drivers that can do different
physical layers, or can operate without a netdev, should they be split
into different drivers? drivers/misc for the PCI interface, drivers/net
for ethernet interfaces and its APIs and drivers/infiniband for IB and
its APIs? Generic capabilities like this debugging interface belong to
the PCI device since it is generic to the device hence drivers/misc.

> 
> Maybe the baseline question is whether major subsystems are allowed to
> set their own rules. I think they should as historically we have a very
> broad range of, eh, openness in different fields. Networking is pretty
> open because of the necessary interoperability.

Interoperability applies solely to networking protocols, not how a
device is designed and certainly not to how it can be debugged. There is
a clear difference between standard networking protocols (packets on a
wire and its headers) and device designs.

> 
>> BTW, there is already a broadcom driver under drivers/misc that seems to
>> have a lot of overlap capability wise to this driver. Perhaps a Broadcom
>> person could chime in.
> 
> I'm not aware. Or do you mean bcm-vk? That's a video encoder.

If that specific piece of S/W is a video encoder, why isn't it under
drivers/video? Scanning the code it seems to me to fall under the open
channel between userspace and F/W which is a common paradigm. But I do
not want this to distract from this patch set; really I was just
browsing existing drivers for any overlap.

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