[brussels-dev] kstats and brussels

[sowmini.varadhan at sun.com]

On (05/25/07 00:20), Garrett D'Amore wrote:
> The alternative is for drivers to do _both_ kstats on their own, and 
> support Nemo mac_stat() entry points.  Entirely inelegant.  (Btw, the 
> old GLDv2 suffered this flaw.)  This also means that mac_stat

... I think the paragraph above got truncated?..

> The second problem is simply API growth.  One can view stats as natural 
> properties.  Many drivers even explicitly export ndd tunables in their 
> own kstat.  Having a separate kind of API for drivers to have to 
> implement kstats _in addition_ to the API they will already be doing for 
> Brussels seems wasteful.  Brussels should reduce, not increase, code 
> sizes in device drivers.

Another aspect to consider is that, like the ndd props themselves,
kstats have become a catch-all for all sorts of information. Some kstats
like link speed, would qualify as a property, but there are others
like ipackets/opackets are closer to a "statistic" than a "property". 

Extracting the kstats that would qualify unambiguosly as properties
into Brussels would certainly be a good idea.

--Sowmini