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

[Wold, Saul]

On Mon, 2017-09-25 at 12:54 +0000, Tan, Raymond wrote:
> 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 would suggest an external layer

> I think this boils down to what is the role of meta-intel, is it a
> common layer for IA-based platforms?

meta-intel is meant to be a BSP layer, so more focused in IA-based
platforms.
>  
> Or it's a layer to host software/firmware from Intel? 
>  
As a BSP layer it should be more focused on platforms and not software
from Intel. There are a number of other layers for Intel software.
 
> > 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 ? 
> 
It could work for meta-intel 8.0 since we are independent of the Rocko
release itself.  If Mark can pull together the patches to create a
separate layers for both DPDK and I guess QAT, that would be great.

Sau!

> > 
> > --Mark