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To: DPDK Technical Board

CC: DPDK Developers Mailing List

Hi folks,

In light of the renewed community discussion on API Stability (https://mails.dpdk.org/archives/dev/2019-April/128969.html), now is right time to open a discussion on how DPDK is distributed and updated.

To this point in time, DPDK's primary distribution method has been as source code distributed as a tarball from dpdk.org. This distribution method in addition to abi instability and the dpdk's build system default behaviour of static linking have all encouraged the "tight coupling" or "vendorization" of DPDK.

These behaviours makes it a challenge for end users, those deploying applications based on DPDK, to manage and update DPDK in a method consistent with other system libraries. For instance, an end user may not have any idea which version of DPDK a consuming application may be using and if this DPDK version is reasonably up to date with the latest upstream version. This would not be the case for other system libraries such as glibc.

For these reasons, now is the right time for DPDK to embrace standard Operating System practices for distributing and updating system libraries. The current industry push towards cloud and cloud-friendliness make addressing this issue all the more timely.

To this end, the following proposals are made for discussion at the next techboard meeting:-

• The primary method of distributing DPDK should be as an operating system package, dpdk.org should be updated to reflect this reality and provide OS installation details in place of tarball downloads.

• DPDK should build as a dynamic shared libraries by default, to encourage loose coupling with consuming applications.

• Future guarantees around ABI/API stability should be provided, so that OS packagers can offer safe upgrade paths for consuming applications.

Thank you,

<please sign your name & role here>

Ray Kinsella, DPDK and FD.io Contributor
Luca Boccassi, Debian maintainer and DPDK LTS maintainer
Nirmoy Das, SUSE dpdk maintainer
Christian Ehrhardt, Ubuntu maintainer and former DPDK LTS maintainer
Ian Stokes, Open vSwitch maintainer
Tom Herbert, FD.io/VPP contributor. CentOS NFV SIG chair.
Billy McFall, DPDK consumer and FD.io/VPP Contributor
Aaron Conole, DPDK and OVS consumer, DPDK and OVS Contributor, DPDK and OVS CI maintainer