Community CI Meeting Minutes - March 7, 2024

[Patrick Robb <probb@iol.unh.edu>]

Sorry, I forgot to send these last week.

March 7, 2024

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Attendees
1. Patrick Robb
2. Ali Alnubani
3. Paul Szczepanek
4. David Marchand
5. Aaron Conole

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Minutes

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General Announcements
* IPSEC-MB requirement increase:
   * Aaron has some questions about whether this new requirement has
been properly documented - having a conversation with Ciara to that
end on the mailing list currently
   * Arm did publish an updated tag for this repo - Ciara has some
ideas for what may be going wrong and started a conversation on the
mailing list
      * Patrick Robbwill forward this conversation to Paul
   * Building under OpenSSL is still supported
* Server Refresh:
   * See the mailing list for the most recent ideas, but we will be
putting various options in front of GB in the March meeting
   * Idea is to try to support as many arches as possible (intel x86,
amd x86, arm grace-grace)

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CI Status

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UNH-IOL Community Lab
* Hardware Refresh:
   * NVIDIA CX7:
      * Without writing out the whole background for the cx7 testing
on our NVIDIA DUT, we are being bandwidth capped by the server with
this performance testing, but this can be worked around by acquiring a
2nd CX7 NIC for the DUT server.
         * For on thing, this corresponds to the testing NVIDIA
publishes: https://fast.dpdk.org/doc/perf/DPDK_23_07_NVIDIA_NIC_performance_report.pdf
         * Patrick has asked whether NVIDIA can donate this NIC. We
can also go to the DPDK project asking for it, but they have already
provided two cx7 to the Community Lab, so it is not ideal.
         * Over email we have noted that the Broadwell CPU is old and
may not be adequate for higher bandwidth testing
   * QAT 8970 on Amper Server: Has been dry run and is working
      * Requires a few change in DTS which Patrick can submit once
David/Dharmik give approval (basically relates to loading vfio with
custom options for certain QAT devices only)
      * If there are no objections, UNH folks can write up the
automation scripts today and get the testing online today or next
week.
* Test Coverage changes:
   * OpenSSL driver test has been added to our unit testing jobs
   * Marvell mvneta build test has been added, per:
https://doc.dpdk.org/guides/nics/mvneta.html
* Debian 12 has been added to the CI template engine, and we’re
running testing from this now
   * Need to upstream this.
* Robin Jarry noted on Slack UNH has been sending out results to
test-reports mailing list without setting in-reply-to message-id for
the patchseries. Adam has resolved this.
   * Ferruh also notes that in looking at this he noticed duplicate
emails being sent by UNH, which we still need to resolve
* Cody at UNH has been making updates to testing on Windows:
   * Did modify the 2022 build test this week, moving it from the MSVC
preview compiler to the MSVC standard compiler (which with v17.9.2 has
now caught up to the build features previously only available in the
preview version)
   * Cody is also adding the Clang and Mingw64 compile jobs to the
2022 server (they are only on server 2019 right now) and also is
adding DPDK unit test/fast tests to the 2022 server.
* David Marchand noticed a bug with the create artifact script: After
failing to apply on the recommended branch and trying to fall back on
applying to main, it did not checkout to tip of main. Patrick will
look.
* Bugzilla ticket was creating noting that we need to add
23.11-staging to our CI

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Intel Lab
* None

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Github Actions
* Has to double check the ipsec-mb requirement and how we generate abi
symbols. Need to check that they are pulling the right version.
* In progress in migrating back to the original server this ran on
before the server was physically moved to another location
   * Going to completely re-image/update the server
* Posted a series for adding Cirrus-CI to the robot monitoring
   * Comments are welcome on the mailin list
   * Need to add a Cirrus YAML config for the DPDK repo

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Loongarch Lab
* Zhoumin has stated on the mailing list that he can support the email
based retest framework
   * Possible to store commit hash when series as submitted, and
recreate those artifacts as needed
   * Also can support re-apply on tip of branch X
   * There is an ongoing conversation on CI mailing list for this

=====================================================================
DTS Improvements & Test Development
24.07 Roadmap
* Ethdev testsuites:
   * Nicholas:
      * Jumboframes:
https://git.dpdk.org/tools/dts/tree/test_plans/jumboframes_test_plan.rst
      * Mac Filter:
https://git.dpdk.org/tools/dts/tree/test_plans/mac_filter_test_plan.rst
   * Prince:
      * Dynamic Queue:
https://git.dpdk.org/tools/dts/tree/test_plans/dynamic_queue_test_plan.rst
   * Need to vet the testsuites. It may be possible to add additional
testcases, refactor testcases. We want to flex the same capabilities
as the old testsuites, but make improvements where possible.
      * We should loop in ethdev maintainers and ask for their review
on the testcases
      * David test an email a couple years ago which priority ranked
some ethdev capabilities and testsuites, and if we can find this email
we should use it.
         * https://inbox.dpdk.org/ci/CAJFAV8y8-LSh5vniZXR812ckKNa2ELEJVRKRzT53PVu2zO902w@mail.gmail.com/
* Configuration schema updates:
   * Nicholas:
      * Working on the Hugepages allocation first, then will do the
other config updates (ripping out some unneeded keys from the schema)
      * Will follow up with the ethdev testsuites
* API Docs generation:
   * Juraj: Needs review from Thomas (the Doxygen integration part),
may need to be addressed when Juraj gets back from vacation.
* Skip test cases based on testbed capabilities:
   * Juraj: RFC should be ready before Juraj leaves on vacation. 24.07
shouldn't be a problem.
   * RFC Patch:
https://patches.dpdk.org/project/dpdk/patch/20240301155416.96960-1-juraj.linkes@pantheon.tech/
      * The patch requires
https://patches.dpdk.org/project/dpdk/list/?series=31329
   * Bugzilla: https://bugs.dpdk.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1351
* Rename the execution section/stage:
   * Juraj: Juraj will work on this in 24.07 and submit a patch to
continue the discussion. The v1 patch will be ready for 24.07, but the
discussion/review could push the patch to 24.11.
   * Bugzilla: https://bugs.dpdk.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1355
* Add support for externally compiled DPDK:
   * Juraj: Juraj will start working on this in 24.07. There's a small
chance we'll get this in 24.07, but Juraj wants to target this for
24.11.
   * Bugzilla: https://bugs.dpdk.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1365
* Jeremy has a bugzilla ticket for refactoring how we handle scapy on
the TG (no more XMLRPC server), and will do this in 24.07
* We will finalize at next DTS meeting

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Any other business
* Next Meeting: March 21, 2024