Re: [PATCH net-next v2 01/10] net: dsa: add debugfs interface

[Jiri Pirko <jiri@resnulli.us>]

Thu, Sep 14, 2017 at 11:01:32PM CEST, andrew@lunn.ch wrote:
>> Can you clarify what type of registers it is you are wanting to read?
>> We already have ethtool which is meant to allow reading the device
>> registers for a given netdev. As long as the port has a netdev
>> associated it then there is no need to be getting into debugfs since
>> we should probably just be using ethtool.
>
>Not all ports of a DSA switch have a netdev. This is by design. The
>presentation we gave to Netdev 2.1 gives some of the background.
>
>Plus a switch has a lot of registers not associated to port. Often a
>switch has more global registers than port registers.
> 
>> Also as Jiri pointed out there is already devlink which would probably
>> be a better way to get the associated information for those pieces
>> that don't have a netdev associated with them.
>
>We have looked at the devlink a few times. The current dpipe code is
>not generic enough. It makes assumptions about the architecture of the
>switch, that it is all match/action based. The niche of top of rack
>switches might be like that, but average switches are not.
>
>If dpipe was to support simple generic two dimensional tables, we
>probably would use it.
>
>David suggested making a class device for DSA. It is not ideal, but we
>are probably going to go that way.

I believe that is also big mistake.

Could you put together your requirements so we can work it out to extend
devlink to support them?

Thanks.