xref: /dpdk/doc/guides/rel_notes/deprecation.rst (revision cb440babbd45a80c059f8bc80e87c48d09086fd7)
1..  SPDX-License-Identifier: BSD-3-Clause
2    Copyright 2018 The DPDK contributors
3
4ABI and API Deprecation
5=======================
6
7See the guidelines document for details of the :doc:`ABI policy
8<../contributing/abi_policy>`. API and ABI deprecation notices are to be posted
9here.
10
11Deprecation Notices
12-------------------
13
14* meson: The minimum supported version of meson for configuring and building
15  DPDK will be increased to v0.47.1 (from 0.41) from DPDK 19.05 onwards. For
16  those users with a version earlier than 0.47.1, an updated copy of meson
17  can be got using the ``pip``, or ``pip3``, tool for downloading python
18  packages.
19
20* kvargs: The function ``rte_kvargs_process`` will get a new parameter
21  for returning key match count. It will ease handling of no-match case.
22
23* eal: The function ``rte_eal_remote_launch`` will return new error codes
24  after read or write error on the pipe, instead of calling ``rte_panic``.
25
26* eal: The ``rte_logs`` struct and global symbol will be made private to
27  remove it from the externally visible ABI and allow it to be updated in the
28  future.
29
30* rte_atomicNN_xxx: These APIs do not take memory order parameter. This does
31  not allow for writing optimized code for all the CPU architectures supported
32  in DPDK. DPDK will adopt C11 atomic operations semantics and provide wrappers
33  using C11 atomic built-ins. These wrappers must be used for patches that
34  need to be merged in 20.08 onwards. This change will not introduce any
35  performance degradation.
36
37* rte_smp_*mb: These APIs provide full barrier functionality. However, many
38  use cases do not require full barriers. To support such use cases, DPDK will
39  adopt C11 barrier semantics and provide wrappers using C11 atomic built-ins.
40  These wrappers must be used for patches that need to be merged in 20.08
41  onwards. This change will not introduce any performance degradation.
42
43* rte_cio_*mb: Since the IO barriers for ARMv8 platforms are relaxed from DSB
44  to DMB, rte_cio_*mb APIs provide the same functionality as rte_io_*mb
45  APIs (taking all platforms into consideration). rte_io_*mb APIs should be
46  used in the place of rte_cio_*mb APIs. The rte_cio_*mb APIs will be
47  deprecated in 20.11 release.
48
49* igb_uio: In the view of reducing the kernel dependency from the main tree,
50  as a first step, the Technical Board decided to move ``igb_uio``
51  kernel module to the dpdk-kmods repository in the /linux/igb_uio/ directory
52  in 20.11.
53  Minutes of Technical Board Meeting of `2019-11-06
54  <https://mails.dpdk.org/archives/dev/2019-November/151763.html>`_.
55
56* lib: will fix extending some enum/define breaking the ABI. There are multiple
57  samples in DPDK that enum/define terminated with a ``.*MAX.*`` value which is
58  used by iterators, and arrays holding these values are sized with this
59  ``.*MAX.*`` value. So extending this enum/define increases the ``.*MAX.*``
60  value which increases the size of the array and depending on how/where the
61  array is used this may break the ABI.
62  ``RTE_ETH_FLOW_MAX`` is one sample of the mentioned case, adding a new flow
63  type will break the ABI because of ``flex_mask[RTE_ETH_FLOW_MAX]`` array
64  usage in following public struct hierarchy:
65  ``rte_eth_fdir_flex_conf -> rte_fdir_conf -> rte_eth_conf (in the middle)``.
66  Need to identify this kind of usages and fix in 20.11, otherwise this blocks
67  us extending existing enum/define.
68  One solution can be using a fixed size array instead of ``.*MAX.*`` value.
69
70* ethdev: Split the ``struct eth_dev_ops`` struct to hide it as much as possible
71  will be done in 20.11.
72  Currently the ``struct eth_dev_ops`` struct is accessible by the application
73  because some inline functions, like ``rte_eth_tx_descriptor_status()``,
74  access the struct directly.
75  The struct will be separate in two, the ops used by inline functions will be
76  moved next to Rx/Tx burst functions, rest of the ``struct eth_dev_ops`` struct
77  will be moved to header file for drivers to hide it from applications.
78
79* ethdev: the legacy filter API, including
80  ``rte_eth_dev_filter_supported()``, ``rte_eth_dev_filter_ctrl()`` as well
81  as filter types MACVLAN, ETHERTYPE, FLEXIBLE, SYN, NTUPLE, TUNNEL, FDIR,
82  HASH and L2_TUNNEL, is superseded by the generic flow API (rte_flow) in
83  PMDs that implement the latter.
84  Target release for removal of the legacy API will be defined once most
85  PMDs have switched to rte_flow.
86
87* ethdev: Update API functions returning ``void`` to return ``int`` with
88  negative errno values to indicate various error conditions (e.g.
89  invalid port ID, unsupported operation, failed operation):
90
91  - ``rte_eth_dev_stop``
92  - ``rte_eth_dev_close``
93
94* ethdev: New offload flags ``DEV_RX_OFFLOAD_FLOW_MARK`` will be added in 19.11.
95  This will allow application to enable or disable PMDs from updating
96  ``rte_mbuf::hash::fdir``.
97  This scheme will allow PMDs to avoid writes to ``rte_mbuf`` fields on Rx and
98  thereby improve Rx performance if application wishes do so.
99  In 19.11 PMDs will still update the field even when the offload is not
100  enabled.
101
102* ethdev: ``rx_descriptor_done`` dev_ops and ``rte_eth_rx_descriptor_done``
103  will be deprecated in 20.11 and will be removed in 21.11.
104  Existing ``rte_eth_rx_descriptor_status`` and ``rte_eth_tx_descriptor_status``
105  APIs can be used as replacement.
106
107* ethdev: Some internal APIs for driver usage are exported in the .map file.
108  Now DPDK has ``__rte_internal`` marker so we can mark internal APIs and move
109  them to the INTERNAL block in .map. Although these APIs are internal it will
110  break the ABI checks, that is why change is planned for 20.11.
111  The list of internal APIs are mainly ones listed in ``rte_ethdev_driver.h``.
112
113* traffic manager: All traffic manager API's in ``rte_tm.h`` were mistakenly made
114  ABI stable in the v19.11 release. The TM maintainer and other contributors have
115  agreed to keep the TM APIs as experimental in expectation of additional spec
116  improvements. Therefore, all APIs in ``rte_tm.h`` will be marked back as
117  experimental in v20.11 DPDK release. For more details, please see `the thread
118  <https://mails.dpdk.org/archives/dev/2020-April/164970.html>`_.
119
120* cryptodev: support for using IV with all sizes is added, J0 still can
121  be used but only when IV length in following structs ``rte_crypto_auth_xform``,
122  ``rte_crypto_aead_xform`` is set to zero. When IV length is greater or equal
123  to one it means it represents IV, when is set to zero it means J0 is used
124  directly, in this case 16 bytes of J0 need to be passed.
125
126* sched: To allow more traffic classes, flexible mapping of pipe queues to
127  traffic classes, and subport level configuration of pipes and queues
128  changes will be made to macros, data structures and API functions defined
129  in "rte_sched.h". These changes are aligned to improvements suggested in the
130  RFC https://mails.dpdk.org/archives/dev/2018-November/120035.html.
131
132* metrics: The function ``rte_metrics_init`` will have a non-void return
133  in order to notify errors instead of calling ``rte_exit``.
134
135* power: ``rte_power_set_env`` function will no longer return 0 on attempt
136  to set new power environment if power environment was already initialized.
137  In this case the function will return -1 unless the environment is unset first
138  (using ``rte_power_unset_env``). Other function usage scenarios will not change.
139
140* python: Since the beginning of 2020, Python 2 has officially reached
141  end-of-support: https://www.python.org/doc/sunset-python-2/.
142  Python 2 support will be completely removed in 20.11.
143  In 20.08, explicit deprecation warnings will be displayed when running
144  scripts with Python 2.
145