[ewg] EWG/OFED meeting minutes for June 12, 2012

[Tziporet Koren]

EWG/OFED meeting minutes for June 12, 2012
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1. Clarification of the terms "OFED" and "OFS"  (OFA Software):
	Jim Ryan presented the topic and we discussed what OFA Software means.
	Jim will  take it with MWG and the board.

2. OFED releases:

2.1 OFED 3.2: 
	- RC1 was released
	- issues: 
		- Does not support RHEL 6.3
		- PPC problems
	
	OFED 1.5.4.1 does support 6.3 so we do have a solution
	Decision: If the fixes are small Vlad will fix those and create RC2 before we move to next release, but this is not a must.

2.2 Next step:
	Discussion if to move to kernel 3.5-rc2 (instead of GA kernel)
	Pros: 
	- Issues we will fix can be submitted to the same kernel
	- Have all latest and greatest fixes and features already in the kernel
	- Our testing will cover the latest kernel code
	- OFED releases will be close to the kernel releases
	Cons:
	- Schedule depend on kernel and we have smaller predictability on the exact date
	
	Decision:
	We decided to start working on the latest kernel that is under release process (will be 3.5.now)
	Vlad will prepare compat and publish next week

	Need to publish MPI versions to test - Woody will take it with the list

2.3 Kernel patches
	We found that the compat supports adding kernel patches that already accepted upstream. 
	We already used it in 3.2-rc1 and we can use this to add fixes that accepted to newer kernels to our package


3. How to deal with experimental staff
There is a need to provide a substantial feature that requires many code changes for testing
This can be good for testing and get customers' feedback during development
In general all agree to this (was also part of what we presented in Monterey)

Execution:
- We will start after first GA release (3.5)
- Need to have a technology-preview branch that enable this
- This branch should be maintained and managed by the company that interested in the technology preview feature
- The responsible company can decide which OSes to support.



Tziporet