On 2/16/26 9:00 PM, Stephen Hemminger wrote:
The documentation for rte_eth_tx_burst() uses the word "sent" to describe the return value, which is misleading. Packets returned as consumed may not have been transmitted yet; they have been accepted by the driver and are no longer the caller's responsibility.This matters because the common usage pattern is: n = rte_eth_tx_burst(port, txq, mbufs, nb_pkts); for (i = n; i < nb_pkts; i++) rte_pktmbuf_free(mbufs[i]); For this to work correctly, the contract must be: - tx_pkts[0..n-1]: ownership transferred to the driver. - tx_pkts[n..nb_pkts-1]: untouched, still owned by the caller. Several drivers (and AI-assisted reviews) misinterpret the current wording and treat packets with errors as unconsumed, returning a short count. This causes callers to retry those packets indefinitely. The correct behavior is that the driver must consume (and free) erroneous packets, counting them via tx_errors. Replace "sent" with "consumed" in the return value description, spell out the mbuf ownership contract, clarify the error handling expectation, and update the @return block to match. Signed-off-by: Stephen Hemminger <[email protected]>
Acked-by: Andrew Rybchenko <[email protected]> Thanks for the clarification. I really like it.
