On Mon, 11 Mar 2024 12:22:51 +0200 Leon Romanovsky wrote: > > From my experience, you can leverage all the helpers to deal with the > > relationship between struct net_device and you private structure. Here > > are some examples that comes to my mind: > > > > * alloc_netdev() allocates the private structure for you > > * netdev_priv() gets the private structure for you > > * dev->priv_destructor sets the destructure to be called when the > > interface goes away or failures. > > Everything above is true, but it doesn't relevant to HFI1 devices which > are not netdev devices. Why are they abusing struct net_device then? If you're willing to take care of removing the use of NAPI from this driver completely, that'd be great. > > > Will it create multiple "dummy" netdev in the system? Will all devices > > > have the same "dummy" name? > > > > Are these devices visible to userspace? > > HFI devices yes, dummy device no. > > > > > This allocation are using NET_NAME_UNKNOWN, which implies that the > > device is not expose to userspace. > > Great > > > > > Would you prefer a different name? > > I prefer to see some new wrapper over plain alloc_netdev, which will > create this dummy netdevice. For example, alloc_dummy_netdev(...). Nope, no bona fide APIs for hacky uses.
