Abstracting struct ifnet

[Marcel Moolenaar]

On Feb 17, 2012, at 12:23 AM, Luigi Rizzo wrote:
>> 
>> Thoughts, feedback and suggestion are welcome,
> 
> I do like the idea, but the amount of changes will be massive
> (see below). The thing that worries me the most is that it
> will introduce huge changes between different releases, unless
> we backport the accessors (while keeping the underlying struct ifnet
> frozen so we preserve the kernel ABI).

Hi Luigi,

That's a good point. When we have something to work with on -current
and ideally with only a few drivers changed, we not only have a
hybrid approach in -current, which allows us to stage the work, we
also have the inherent support for backward compatibility. This then
can be put in 9-stable to allow for "the new network" drivers to be
used in a 9-stable code base as well.

As for the amount of change: yes, it's large. But I think it's a
good investment and an enabler for structural ifnet rework.

FYI,

-- 
Marcel Moolenaar
marcel at xcllnt.net