[ewg] OFA EWG Meeting: Monday, Feb 27, 2017, 09:00 AM US Pacific Time (12pm EST) - Minutes

[Adit Ranadive]

On Tue, Mar 07, 2017 at 11:55:42PM +0000, Davis, Arlin R wrote:
>> Currently, the vmw_pvrdma driver is included as a tech preview. It still
>> requires its userspace component
>> (libvmw_pvrdma) from rdma-core. It would be part of rdma-core-13 release I
>> think. If OFED decides to use
>> rdma-core-12 release, we would need some way to add the PVRDMA library
>> as well (maybe a tech preview?).
>> Not sure, but other recently added vendors to the linux kernel (qedr) can run
>> into a similar issue.
> 
> Sorry, we didn't do a good job discussing the complete process for the new rdma-core inclusion into OFED. Similar to the kernel compat-rdma code we need a way to pull in the latest upstream released packages and then allow patches to be pulled in as needed for OFED. So, in this case we should be pulling the tested and validated rdma-core-12 base and then going from there. 
>

Totally understand that only release rdma-core tags should be pulled into OFED.
 
> One way to do this is to maybe have Vlad maintain an rdma-core git tree on OFA website for OFED packaging. He would pull in the last official release of rdma-core which is currently tagged as "rdma-core-12". Provider maintainers can clone this git tree, backport any rdma-core-master changes, include bug fixes, and then ask Vlad to pull from their "for-vlad" or whatever branch you like. The OFED packaging process would pull from this local rdma-core git tree instead of directly from git-hub.com.
> 
> Does this make sense? Would this work for provider maintainers or is there a better way? 

I dont mind this approach, though it seems like more work for Vlad.

You would have to also take into consideration that a new rdma-core release happens 
(or is supposed to happen) in conjunction with a kernel release. That would depend on
whether you want to update the rdma-core included in OFED.

Maybe in the future you could take just the rdma-core released for kernel and then backport 
stuff to it? I dont think there was one made for 4.8 though.

> 
> Regards, 
> 
> Arlin
> 
> 
> 
>