On Tue, May 12, 2026 at 1:59 AM Jakub Kicinski <[email protected]> wrote: > All code require maintenance. I'm trying to push back on netdevsim use > across the board. It was essentially a workaround for us not having any > real HW CI upstream. But that's no longer the case. Well, we still don't > have any crypto-capable HW :/ I think you'd be better off implementing > whatever you need in a small OOT module instead adding fake tests > upstream.
OK, we'll continue with our current approach of maintaining some OOT patches and recompile netdevsim with them. However, just as an opinion to consider: I don't think that pushing back on netdevsim is good. Even if you (upstream Linux) have available hardware now, small distributions may not have it. And userspace projects that interact with the Linux uAPI may not have it. But they can still benefit from a mocked Ethernet device like netdevsim to have a decent CI coverage, which benefits the entire Linux ecosystem's quality. For these userspace projects, saying that they should create their own OOT module (basically reinventing part of netdevsim) is not reasonable. They may not have enough kernel knowledge, and the effort is absolutely not worth it. They will just probably leave some parts without testing coverage. A better alternative would be to have a common OOT module that many projects can share and use. But that common module already exists: netdevsim. And it's hosted in its natural place: upstream kernel. Those are my 2 cents. Thanks for your time and feedback, OTOH I totally understand your concerns about the effort required to maintain any piece of code. -- Íñigo Huguet
