[ewg] RE: RHEL 5.3 and OFED 1.4.x

[Steve Wise]

Doug Ledford wrote:
> On Thu, 2009-01-22 at 16:07 -0600, Steve Wise wrote:
>   
>> I understand the desire to not release new features in a point release, 
>> but at the same time, these features are ready or near ready now.  And 
>> prior features have definitely been released in point releases.  
>> (connectX for example).  Another key point is that these features do not 
>> need the kernel rebase that will happen with ofed-1.5, which will take 
>> months...
>>
>> Just more thoughts.  :)
>>     
>
> I'm a bit late to this discussion, and you may have already talked about
> this in the ewg teleconference, but I want to throw in my thoughts.
>
> As far as new features goes, adding ConnectX support in a point release
> is a huge difference from switching OpenMPI releases from a stable
> series to the .0 release of the next series.  In the case of ConnectX,
> it was "just another driver" and its addition should have had almost 0
> impact on anyone not using that driver.  On the other hand, switching
> OpenMPI versions changes the OpenMPI stack for everyone and has the
> potential to create wide spread regressions should something go wrong.
> So the risk factor comparison between these two actions simply isn't
> valid.  One doesn't risk regressions for non-ConnectX users, one risks
> regressions for everyone using OpenSM.
>
>   
Good points.

One way to alleviate this is to ship both 1.2.8 and 1.3 in ofed-1.4.1 
and mark 1.3 as "experimental".  Then remove 1.2.8 in ofed-1.5 and make 
1.3.x the production version for ofed-1.5.

I suggested this in the last conf call but folks didn't like the thought 
of testing both.  But perhaps marking it "experimental" resolves this 
issue?  So the iWARP vendors will test 1.3 and little to no testing is 
required for 1.2.8 since it has been qualified with ofed-1.4 QA.

Steve.