netdev - Question on ethtool strategy wrt legacy ioctl

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Message-ID: <77a48e2f-ddb1-44d8-8e3f-5bc5cb015e9f@gmail.com>
Date: Fri, 16 Feb 2024 11:53:26 +0100
From: Heiner Kallweit <hkallweit1@...il.com>
To: Michal Kubecek <mkubecek@...e.cz>, Jakub Kicinski <kuba@...nel.org>,
 Paolo Abeni <pabeni@...hat.com>, David Miller <davem@...emloft.net>,
 Eric Dumazet <edumazet@...gle.com>
Cc: "netdev@...r.kernel.org" <netdev@...r.kernel.org>,
 Andrew Lunn <andrew@...n.ch>,
 Russell King - ARM Linux <linux@...linux.org.uk>
Subject: Question on ethtool strategy wrt legacy ioctl

When working on ethtool functionality on both sides, userspace and kernel, the following questions came to my mind:

- Is there any good reason why somebody would set CONFIG_ETHTOOL_NETLINK = n ?
  Or can this config option be removed?

- If for a certain ethtool functionality ioctl and netlink is supported, can the ioctl part be removed more sooner than later?
  Or is there any scenario where netlink can't be used?
  Remark: I see there's certain functionality which is supported via netlink only and doesn't have an ioctl fallback.

- Do we have to support the case that a user wants to use an old ethtool w/o netlink support with a new kernel?
  Or is it acceptable to urge such users to upgrade their userspace ethtool?