On Sat, Jan 25, 2020 at 08:49:58PM +0200, Leon Romanovsky wrote: > On Sat, Jan 25, 2020 at 08:55:01AM -0800, Florian Fainelli wrote: > > > > > > On 1/25/2020 8:14 AM, Leon Romanovsky wrote: > > > From: Leon Romanovsky <leonro@xxxxxxxxxxxx> > > > > > > In order to stop useless driver version bumps and unify output > > > presented by ethtool -i, let's overwrite the version string. > > > > > > Before this change: > > > [leonro@erver ~]$ ethtool -i eth0 > > > driver: virtio_net > > > version: 1.0.0 > > > After this change: > > > [leonro@server ~]$ ethtool -i eth0 > > > driver: virtio_net > > > version: 5.5.0-rc6+ > > > > > > Signed-off-by: Leon Romanovsky <leonro@xxxxxxxxxxxx>> --- > > > Changelog: > > > v1: Resend per-Dave's request > > > https://lore.kernel.org/linux-rdma/20200125.101311.1924780619716720495.davem@xxxxxxxxxxxxx > > > No changes at all and applied cleanly on top of "3333e50b64fe Merge branch 'mlxsw-Offload-TBF'" > > > v0: https://lore.kernel.org/linux-rdma/20200123130541.30473-1-leon@xxxxxxxxxx > > > > There does not appear to be any explanation why we think this is a good > > idea for *all* drivers, and not just the ones that are purely virtual? > > We beat this dead horse too many times already, latest discussion and > justification can be found in that thread. > https://lore.kernel.org/linux-rdma/20200122152627.14903-1-michal.kalderon@xxxxxxxxxxx/T/#md460ff8f976c532a89d6860411c3c50bb811038b > > However, it was discussed in ksummit mailing list too and overall > agreement that version exposed by in-tree modules are useless and > sometimes even worse. They mislead users to expect some features > or lack of them based on this arbitrary string. > > > > > Are you not concerned that this is ABI and that specific userland may be > > relying on a specific info format and we could now be breaking their > > version checks? I do not disagree that the version is not particularly > > useful for in-tree kernel, but this is ABI, and breaking user-space is > > usually a source of support questions. > > See this Linus's response: > "The unified policy is pretty much that version codes do not matter, do > not exist, and do not get updated. > > Things are supposed to be backwards and forwards compatible, because > we don't accept breakage in user space anyway. So versioning is > pointless, and only causes problems." > https://lore.kernel.org/ksummit-discuss/CA+55aFx9A=5cc0QZ7CySC4F2K7eYaEfzkdYEc9JaNgCcV25=rg@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx/ > > I also don't think that declaring every print in the kernel as ABI is > good thing to do. We are not breaking binary ABI and continuing to > supply some sort of versioning, but in unified format and not in wild > west way like it is now. > > So bottom line, if some REAL user space application (not test suites) relies > on specific version reported from ethtool, it is already broken and can't work > sanely for stable@, distros and upstream kernels. And about support questions, I'm already over-asked to update our mlx5 driver version every time some of our developers adds new feature (every week or two), which is insane. So I prefer to have one stable solution in the kernel. Thanks > > Thanks
