[ewg] EWG/OFED meeting minutes for today (Dec 13, 2011)

[Tziporet Koren]

Meeting minutes summary for Dec 13, 2011:

OFED 1.5.4:
--------------
1. OFED 1.5.4.1 stable release:
    We will wait few more weeks to see if more issues revealed and if needed have a release in Jan.

New OFED releases:
-------------------------
1. Approve the new approach of having OFED based on kernel code + backports and packaging.
    Release names: will be the same as the kernel.

There is a consensus that this approach is good and the suggestion approved.


2. Building the package:

* User space:
	OFED will contain the library tarballs provided by the maintainers.
	This will enable support for non-RPM based distros (such as Ubuntu)
	For RPM based OSes (e.g. Redhat/SuSE) the install script will create the SRPMs on the fly - so the outcome will be the same as today.
	Notes: 
	- MPI implementations will not be included in OFED anymore.
Discussion: Need to agree on a specific MVAPICH2 and Open MPI versions that all will be tested with.
We may need a special install for the MPI packages so they will be built in a proper way for OFED.
We will know for sure only after we will have the first package
	- We wish to remove packages without maintainers (e.g. libehca from IBM)

* Kernel:
	Kernel code will be taken from RCs or GA of the kernel
	Git trees:
	- kernel git tree will be mirrored to OFA server - just for ease of use (all other git trees will be there too)
	- sdp - git tree for SDP - will be a different package
	- kernel-backports - for all backports (as today)
	- kernel-scripts (e.g. openibd)

There is a suggestion from Eduard from Qlogic to have the backports ad different branches and not as today.
He will start a mail thread on his suggestion.

Steve commented that we should learn the project Roland suggested:
https://lkml.org/lkml/2011/9/9/327 and its links have interesting and possibly
useful information about the wireless-compat backporting project. 

This can help us in the way we will do backporting.


* OFED:
	- docs git tree
	- scripts git tree (e.g. install, build etc.)

* Build:
	The build script will take all the above and will create the OFED package

Schedule for first release:
--------------------------------
Target to have the first release based on kernel 3.2 - thus next OFED will be OFED 3.2

Schedule:
* First package supporting only kernel.org - Jan 5
The schedule of the backports will depend on the way we will decide to do the backporting.

OSes to support:
* Backport for SLES 11 SP2 
* Backport for RHEL 6.2
* GA date - will be decided later

Open: 
* Can we skip RHEL 5.x support? It may be complicated since it’s a very old kernel base (2.6.18)
There are many customers still using RHEL 5.x and we may need to support it, even this is quite an old kernel and we may have some technical challenges here.
* Which other OSes we should support?
SelLinux - for the interop. Other - not clear
* To which kernel.org we should have backports if any?
Not decided

Woody will start a mail thread on OSes  in the EWG mailing list.

Experimental features:
-----------------------------
In general we will enable a way to have branches with experimental features.
Mechanism for this will be decided later.


Note: we will skip the next meeting due to US holiday.
Our next meeting will be on Jan 10 2012

Happy Holidays and New Year to everybody :-)

Tziporet