[openfabrics-ewg] Re: How to generate IBED releases using 1.0branch

[Jeff Broughton]

There are two interesting questions about the differences between EWG 
release and OpenFabrics:  First, why are they different?  Second, should 
they be different?

Why are they different?
Absent the participation of many of the current players, the decision 
was taken to create a release that fulfilled OpenFabrics mission of 
integration with the commercial OSes and providing production-worthy 
software.  These factors led to two crucial tactics.

1) The release should only use components in the kernel.org tree that 
was to be adopted by RedHat and SuSE. This way customers of the major OS 
distributions would have the necessary software to run OpenFabrics 
without mucking around with the kernel. The other consequence of this 
was to only release the user-level software that wasn't immediately 
destined to be in the distros.

2) Components were selected on the basis of their stability, and hence, 
likelihood that they would survive testing by the community.  There 
would be no "beta" components to confuse the consumers.

The EWG release appropriately intends to include all ULPs that customers 
have a strong immediate interest in.  SDP, in particular, is important. 
  But since SDP is not in the kernel.org tree, that forces the decision 
for the EWG release to include kernel components.  Likewise, given the 
stability of some of these packages, the notion of a technology preview 
becomes necessary.

Should they be different?
IMHO, no.  For the most part, the same players are working on both. 
There are only a few developers not represented by the organizations in 
the EWG.  Frankly, to allow these two to diverge would only be to add 
work for us all, and cause customer confusion.

It is entirely within our power to resolve the discrepancies in the 
strategy, and to make sure that there is only a single release.

-- 
Jeff Broughton
Vice President of Engineering
PathScale, Inc.
2071 Stierlin Ct.
Mountain View, CA 94043-4655
Phone: 650-934-8080