[ofa-general] Re: How to tell what OFED rev a distro derived IB modules?

[Jason Gunthorpe]

On Mon, Apr 27, 2009 at 09:27:40AM +0300, Jack Morgenstein wrote:

> > In general such requirement seems fundamentally bad for me. OFED goal is
> > to provide support for IB and iWARP, and not to develop its own linux
> > kernel.

> The OFED distributions may contain features that the mainstream
> kernels and libraries do not support.  These features frequently
> require changes in the Infiniband kernel modules.  Such changes are
> in the form of kernel patches which are applied to the base
> mainstream kernel on which the OFED release is based.  A lag between
> the mainstream kernel and the OFED kernel is unavoidable, since the
> new features are first released in the OFED distributions -- and
> later, gradually (and hopefully), these features make there way into
> the upstream kernel.

Well, as others have said not following the upstream-first philosophy
is 'not the Linux way' - but fundamentally, the wrong things are being
QA'd :(

OFED tests the past - back ports to old distributions and a random
non-upstream collection of patches ontop of that. That is fine for end
users, but..

It seems almost no testing is done on the future - pristine Linux
kernel and pristine user space libraries (and combinations
therein). If stock the Linus kernel and stock IB support libraries
don't work - what hope is there to QA the huge matrix that is OFED -
especially if you give up on the include random patches idea.

So we have this treadmill where OFED continues to exists because it is
the only thing that works, and we can't be rid of it.

But I know this is hashed over every year at Sonoma ...

Jason