Create process for adding VFs

https://bugs.dpdk.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1500

Bug ID: 1500
Summary: Create process for adding VFs
Product: DPDK
Version: unspecified
Hardware: All
OS: All
Status: UNCONFIRMED
Severity: normal
Priority: Normal
Component: DTS
Assignee: [email protected]
Reporter: [email protected]
CC: [email protected], [email protected]
Target Milestone: ---

VFs are used in multiple of the ethdev test suites that we were planning to port over into new DTS, but we don't have a method of creating them currently. Judging by the process that is laid out in multiple test_plans (like stats_check for example:
https://git.dpdk.org/tools/dts/tree/test_plans/stats_checks_test_plan.rst) it seems like actually creating the VF and binding it to vfio-pci is pretty simple. However, because the VFs are on top of the PF that exist on the NIC's ports, it raises a few questions about where VFs should live in the framework and how they should be managed, since they get their own PCI addresses.

It might be enough to just add VFs as a list of objects under a port and manage them that way, but they almost look like ports themselves to testpmd and devbind. Also, since we currently start testpmd by explicitly allowing the PCI addresses for the ports in the current testrun, do we also include all VFs configured on the ports? Do we always want testpmd to see them if they are configured? There are a few things to discuss regarding how to implement them properly.

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