Since its first release, DPDK has provided the ethdev API allowing applications to get/set NIC hardware. And we have added more to that over time. Then in the 17.02 release, came rte_flow API. Over the last few years rte_flow API has gone through a lot of enhancements. Eventually it deprecated the legacy filtering framework. In DPDK 20.11, we introduced the RTE_FLOW_ACTION_TYPE_SAMPLE action which deprecated the rte_eth_mirror_rule_set provided originally in the ethdev API. Likewise we have some more features in the rte_flow API which allow the DPDK applications to configure the underlying NIC hardware without calling the ethdev APIs. There are a few more candidates which could be potentially deprecated in lieu of using suitably crafted rte_flow calls.
