On 1/25/2020 11:24 AM, Leon Romanovsky wrote: > 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. Fair enough, can you spin a new version which provides this background discussion and links into your commit message? -- Florian
