[ewg] Fwd: [ofa-general] OFED 1.2 Feb-26 meeting summary

[Jeff Squyres]

It seems odd to me that you [repeatedly] brush off several members of  
the community that are saying that it's *not* working smoothly enough.

1. We're doing things in the installer that are very much *not* what  
any Linux distro wants us to do (e.g., munge %build into %install).

2. RHEL and SLES -- two of our Big community targets -- are replacing  
all of our installer work with their own.

3. The MPI packages all have to do weird (read: non-standard and  
potentially hazardous) things to get installed properly.

This is not the first time that Doug and I have tried to say "what  
we're doing is wrong!"

More below.



On Mar 17, 2007, at 6:13 PM, Michael S. Tsirkin wrote:

>>> 2. *NOT AN MPI ISSUE*: how the RPMs are built is Bad(tm).  Not
>>> deleting the buildroot is Bad; munging %build into %install is
>>> Bad; ...etc.  This needs to change.  4 choices jump to mind:
>>>
>>>     a. Keep the same scheme.  Ick.
>>>     b. Install while we build (i.e., the normal way to build a pile
>>> of interdependent RPMs)
>>>     c. Use chroot (Red Hat does this in their internal setup, for
>>> example)
>>>     d. Only distribute binary RPMs for supported platforms;  
>>> source is
>>> available for those who want it.
>>
>> d. is the normal route for anyone wanting to provide a known working
>> environment.  Building locally is fraught with perils related to  
>> custom
>> compilers, custom core libraries, and other things that the EWG can't
>> control and can't realistically support.
>
> I don't think d is realistic simply because OFED is not redhat, it  
> needs to be distribution agnostic.

But OFED is *not* distribution agnostic.  We have a specific,  
documented set of distributions that we support.  Having the source  
code available is great, of course.  But Cisco, for example, supports  
only a specific set of distros/versions and we distribute binaries  
for them.  I believe that others may be doing the same...?

> In our experience people *want* to use custom compilers,
> custom core libraries etc.

Do you have customers who build the OFA code base with non-GNU  
compilers?  Right now, the OFED installer only lets you choose none- 
GNU compilers for the MPI installations -- not the OFA code base  
itself.  If this is your strongest point, then refer to what I said  
above:

a) it's the MPI implementations that are complaining that what we are  
doing is Bad
b) it's the MPI implementations that have to do weird/non-standard/ 
potentially hazardous things to get installed properly

-- 
Jeff Squyres
Cisco Systems