[Openib-windows] WHQL signing and code churn

[Fabian Tillier]

Hi Jan,

On 6/23/06, Jan Bottorff <jbottorff at xsigo.com> wrote:
> > > In the future, as this is *not* a critical fix, please wait
> > > for approval before checking in.
> > After speaking with many people at the open IB community, it is hard
> to
> > tell for how long one should wait for approve before check-in. Many
> > people have different opinions. However, all people agree that if one
> > has to wait for two weeks for some response, this is about time moving
> > the responsibility to a different maintainer.
>
> My viewpoint from the sidelines is there is a LOT of code churn for a
> product on the brink of WHQL signature. This might be an indication that
> things are still pretty far from being signed, or it might be an
> indication that changes unrelated to getting signed are being checked
> in.

It is sadly both.  There is a new HCA driver being introduced very
late in the development process, as well as non-critical changes being
checked in that should be better coordinated.

> Fixing bugs and getting WHQL signature are both important goals, and
> assume what's unclear is exactly WHICH bug fixes are critical to make it
> into THIS release.

You are correct, and in my opinion, it is up to the maintainer of a
component to decide what is critical and what is not.  It is not up to
the patch author.

> Do you have any sense of what the WHQL signed release schedule will be
> like in the future? I can think of changes I would like to see, but also
> believe they are too disruptive to even talk about until the next
> release (like making things boot loaded, so we can have bootable IB
> storage).

The short term WHQL goal is to have a certified set of drivers to
support Microsoft's HPC offering.  Plans beyond that are still open,
as there are no WHQL programs defined for storage over IB.

- Fab