[ovs-discuss] Some questions about OVS porting

[Ben Pfaff]

On Tue, May 07, 2013 at 04:35:33PM +0100, Mehdi Rashidi wrote:
> On Thu, May 2, 2013 at 4:58 PM, Ben Pfaff <blp at nicira.com> wrote:
> 
> > On Thu, May 02, 2013 at 12:59:30PM +0100, Mehdi Rashidi wrote:
> > > I am trying to analyze the OVS as an option for porting it to our
> > devices.
> > > Reading the porting document has risen some question for me.
> > > Q: Say I want to port OVS to a new hardware like EZchip NP-3 platform.
> > > According to the document if I want to take full advantage of hardware I
> > > need to write my own "ofproto-provider".
> > > "ofproto-provider" uses "dpif" library.
> >
> > Only if you write your ofproto-provider so that it uses "dpif".  (But in
> > that case why don't you just use ofproto-dpif?)
> >
>  If I can use ofproto-dpif on my hardware and knowing that it uses dpif
> library and datapath kernel module, then besides netdev provider what do I
> need to implement to port OVS on the hardware?

You have the following choices:

        * Implement only a netdev-provider.

        * Implement a netdev-provider and a dpif-provider.

        * Implement a netdev-provider and an ofproto-provider.