[PATCH v3 00/11] Rework forwarding option parsing

David Gibson
2026-04-17T05:05:35Z

This series makes a number of significant reworks to how we process
forwarding options (-t, -u, -T and -U) in passt & pasta. This is
largely motivated by moving towards being able to share this code with
a configuration update tool. However, along the way it also enables
some forwarding configurations that were technically possible with the
forwarding table but couldn't be specified on the command line, in
particular bug 180.

There is still a bunch of work needed to make the parsing code truly
shareable with pesto, but this is a solid start.

v3:
* Removed already merged patches
* Further revisions based on Stefano's review, including
* Improved example text in manpage and usage
* More flexible rule dumping
* Re-integrated conflict checking in fwd_rule_add()
v2:
* Assorted minor changes based on Stefano's review, including
* Explicitly state "guest or namespace" in the manpage
* Clearer description of @rulesocks field
* Worked around a gcc < 15 bug causing a false positive warning
* Update man page and usage() for new capabilities
* Additional patches moving rule parsing out of conf.c

David Gibson (11):
doc: Rework man page description of port specifiers
conf: Move "all" handling to port specifier
conf: Allow user-specified auto-scanned port forwarding ranges
conf: Move SO_BINDTODEVICE workaround to conf_ports()
conf: Don't pass raw commandline argument to conf_ports_spec()
fwd, conf: Add capabilities bits to each forwarding table
conf, fwd: Stricter rule checking in fwd_rule_add()
fwd_rule: Move ephemeral port probing to fwd_rule.c
fwd, conf: Move rule parsing code to fwd_rule.[ch]
fwd_rule: Move conflict checking back within fwd_rule_add()
fwd: Generalise fwd_rules_info()

conf.c | 434 +++--------------------------------------
fwd.c | 142 ++------------
fwd.h | 37 ----
fwd_rule.c | 563 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++---
fwd_rule.h | 68 ++++++-
passt.1 | 72 +++++--
6 files changed, 704 insertions(+), 612 deletions(-)

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2.53.0