1.. SPDX-License-Identifier: BSD-3-Clause 2 Copyright(c) 2010-2014 Intel Corporation. 3 4Introduction 5============ 6 7This document contains instructions for installing and configuring the 8Data Plane Development Kit (DPDK) software. It is designed to get customers 9up and running quickly and describes how to compile and run a 10DPDK application in a FreeBSD application (freebsd) environment, without going 11deeply into detail. 12 13For a comprehensive guide to installing and using FreeBSD, the following 14handbook is available from the FreeBSD Documentation Project: 15`FreeBSD Handbook <http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/index.html>`_. 16 17.. note:: 18 19 DPDK is now available as part of the FreeBSD ports collection and as a pre-built package. 20 Installing via the ports collection or FreeBSD `pkg` infrastructure is now the recommended 21 way to install DPDK on FreeBSD, and is documented in the next chapter, :ref:`install_from_ports`. 22 23Documentation Roadmap 24--------------------- 25 26The following is a list of DPDK documents in the suggested reading order: 27 28* **Release Notes** : Provides release-specific information, including supported 29 features, limitations, fixed issues, known issues and so on. Also, provides the 30 answers to frequently asked questions in FAQ format. 31 32* **Getting Started Guide** (this document): Describes how to install and 33 configure the DPDK; designed to get users up and running quickly with the 34 software. 35 36* **Programmer's Guide**: Describes: 37 38 * The software architecture and how to use it (through examples), 39 specifically in a Linux* application (linux) environment 40 41 * The content of the DPDK, the build system (including the commands 42 that can be used to build the development kit and an application) 43 and guidelines for porting an application 44 45 * Optimizations used in the software and those that should be considered 46 for new development 47 48 A glossary of terms is also provided. 49 50* **API Reference**: Provides detailed information about DPDK functions, 51 data structures and other programming constructs. 52 53* **Sample Applications User Guide**: Describes a set of sample applications. 54 Each chapter describes a sample application that showcases specific functionality 55 and provides instructions on how to compile, run and use the sample application. 56