7. ABI and API Deprecation

See the guidelines document for details of the ABI policy. API and ABI deprecation notices are to be posted here.

7.1. Deprecation Notices

  • Significant ABI changes are planned for struct rte_eth_dev to support up to 1024 queues per port. This change will be in release 2.2. There is no backward compatibility planned from release 2.2. All binaries will need to be rebuilt from release 2.2.
  • ABI changes are planned for struct rte_intr_handle, struct rte_eth_conf and struct eth_dev_ops to support interrupt mode feature from release 2.1. Those changes may be enabled in the release 2.1 with CONFIG_RTE_NEXT_ABI.
  • The EAL function rte_eal_pci_close_one is deprecated because renamed to rte_eal_pci_detach.
  • The Macros RTE_HASH_BUCKET_ENTRIES_MAX and RTE_HASH_KEY_LENGTH_MAX are deprecated and will be removed with version 2.2.
  • The function rte_jhash2 is deprecated and should be removed.
  • The field mem_location of the rte_lpm structure is deprecated and should be removed as well as the macros RTE_LPM_HEAP and RTE_LPM_MEMZONE.
  • Significant ABI changes are planned for struct rte_mbuf, struct rte_kni_mbuf, and several PKT_RX_ flags will be removed, to support unified packet type from release 2.1. Those changes may be enabled in the upcoming release 2.1 with CONFIG_RTE_NEXT_ABI.
  • librte_malloc library has been integrated into librte_eal. The 2.1 release creates a dummy/empty malloc library to fulfill binaries with dynamic linking dependencies on librte_malloc.so. Such dummy library will not be created from release 2.2 so binaries will need to be rebuilt.
  • The following fields have been deprecated in rte_eth_stats: imissed, ibadcrc, ibadlen, imcasts, fdirmatch, fdirmiss, tx_pause_xon, rx_pause_xon, tx_pause_xoff, rx_pause_xoff
  • API for flow director filters has been replaced by rte_eth_dev_filter_ctrl. Following old API is deprecated and will be removed with version 2.2 without backward compatibility. Functions: rte_eth_dev_fdir_*. Structures: rte_fdir_*, rte_eth_fdir. Enums: rte_l4type, rte_iptype.
  • ABI changes are planned for struct rte_eth_fdir_flow_ext in order to support flow director filtering in VF. The release 2.1 does not contain these ABI changes, but release 2.2 will, and no backwards compatibility is planned.
  • ABI change is planned to extend the SCTP flow’s key input from release 2.1. The change may be enabled in the release 2.1 with CONFIG_RTE_NEXT_ABI.
  • ABI changes are planned for struct rte_eth_fdir_filter and rte_eth_fdir_masks in order to support new flow director modes, MAC VLAN and Cloud, on x550. The MAC VLAN mode means the MAC and VLAN are monitored. The Cloud mode is for VxLAN and NVGRE, and the tunnel type, TNI/VNI, inner MAC and inner VLAN are monitored. The release 2.2 will contain these changes without backwards compatibility.
  • librte_kni: Functions based on port id are deprecated for a long time and should be removed (rte_kni_create, rte_kni_get_port_id and rte_kni_info_get).
  • librte_pmd_ring: The deprecated functions rte_eth_ring_pair_create and rte_eth_ring_pair_attach should be removed.
  • ABI changes are planned for struct virtio_net in order to support vhost-user multiple queues feature. It should be integrated in release 2.2 without backward compatibility.
  • The scheduler hierarchy structure (rte_sched_port_hierarchy) will change to allow for a larger number of subport entries. The number of available traffic_classes and queues may also change. The mbuf structure element for sched hierarchy will also change from a single 32 bit to a 64 bit structure.
  • The scheduler statistics structure will change to allow keeping track of RED actions.
  • librte_acl: The structure rte_acl_ipv4vlan_rule is deprecated and should be removed as well as the associated functions rte_acl_ipv4vlan_add_rules and rte_acl_ipv4vlan_build.
  • librte_cfgfile: In order to allow for longer names and values, the value of macros CFG_NAME_LEN and CFG_NAME_VAL will be increased. Most likely, the new values will be 64 and 256, respectively.
  • librte_port: Macros to access the packet meta-data stored within the packet buffer will be adjusted to cover the packet mbuf structure as well, as currently they are able to access any packet buffer location except the packet mbuf structure.
  • librte_table LPM: A new parameter to hold the table name will be added to the LPM table parameter structure.
  • librte_table: New functions for table entry bulk add/delete will be added to the table operations structure.
  • librte_table hash: Key mask parameter will be added to the hash table parameter structure for 8-byte key and 16-byte key extendible bucket and LRU tables.
  • librte_pipeline: The prototype for the pipeline input port, output port and table action handlers will be updated: the pipeline parameter will be added, the packets mask parameter will be either removed (for input port action handler) or made input-only.