[meta-intel] DPDK -- move to a separate sublayer

[Tan, Raymond]

Hi Mark,


> -----Original Message-----
> From: Mark Hatle [mailto:mark.hatle at windriver.com]
> Sent: Wednesday, September 20, 2017 11:30 PM
> To: meta-intel at yoctoproject.org
> Cc: Tan, Raymond <raymond.tan at intel.com>; Wold, Saul
> <saul.wold at intel.com>
> Subject: DPDK -- move to a separate sublayer
> 
> I am looking at using the meta-intel version of DPDK for our customers, but
> including all of meta-intel is problematic for me.  (We currently have our own
> dpdk layer and recipes -- which I'd like to get rid of.)
> 
> The issue is that DPDK is not Intel specific.  Other architectures, vendors can
> and do use DPDK for their components.

Agree on this, in fact for DPDK alone, there were a request came in for Mellanox card months ago,
thus the dpdk-libibverbs recipe.

> 
> Right now to use DPDK, I'm having to use BBMASK to disable pretty much
> everything else in meta-intel for the systems I am trying to support.
> 
> What I would like to propose is moving dpdk into a sublayer of meta-intel (or
> an external layer.)

I'm not sure about the sublayer design, perhaps Saul would have better input on this? 
I think this boils down to what is the role of meta-intel, is it a common layer for IA-based platforms? 
Or it's a layer to host software/firmware from Intel? 
 
> I spoke to Saul about this briefly to see if it sounded like a reasonable idea,
> and at least on the surface it seems reasonable.
> 
> Is this something you would be interested in doing?  If so, I can prepare
> patches to construct the new sublayer and move the associate package(s)
> into that layer.

Would this be in time for the Rocko release / meta-intel 8.0 ? 

> 
> --Mark