From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Shreyansh Jain Subject: Process for removing __rte_experimental Date: Fri, 25 May 2018 15:05:34 +0530 Message-ID: <3ce83a95-8fa0-dfdd-978d-29c5c439a10c@nxp.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Cc: Ferruh Yigit , Thomas Monjalon , bluca@debian.org, nhorman@tuxdriver.com To: "dev@dpdk.org" Return-path: Received: from EUR01-HE1-obe.outbound.protection.outlook.com (mail-he1eur01on0071.outbound.protection.outlook.com [104.47.0.71]) by dpdk.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 3CD762C8 for ; Fri, 25 May 2018 11:35:41 +0200 (CEST) Content-Language: en-US List-Id: DPDK patches and discussions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: dev-bounces@dpdk.org Sender: "dev" While reading through [1], I couldn't understand if __rte_experimental and EXPERIMENTAL tag removed from code and map file, respectively, are categorized under ABI breakage or not. Thus, whether deprecation for them should be sent or not in a release cycle for removal in subsequent release. Logically, EXPERIMENTAL APIs are not part of stable APIs/ABIs and hence they don't really break an ABI. Thus, deprecation for them doesn't make sense. (or, as Luca noted on IRC, removing experimental is like de-deprecation :) ) On IRC, Luca pointed out that in one of the Tech Board meeting minutes [2], this was recorded but that too has slight ambiguity to it. Any thoughts on this? Or, was this documented somewhere other than [1]? [1] http://dpdk.org/doc/guides/contributing/versioning.html [2] https://dpdk.org/ml/archives/dev/2017-October/079961.html (Section 2-b)