Re: [dpdk-dev] GitHub sandbox for the DPDK community

[Thomas F Herbert <thomasfherbert@gmail.com>]

On 5/2/15 7:40 AM, Neil Horman wrote:
> On Fri, May 01, 2015 at 01:36:58PM -0700, Matthew Hall wrote:
>> On Fri, May 01, 2015 at 10:59:32PM +0300, Aaro Koskinen wrote:
>>> Projects like GCC, GLIBC, binutils, busybox, etc or what?
>>>
>>> A.
>> You'll notice all of these are low-level UNIX hacker sorts of tools mostly,
>> with the partial exception of busybox. But even that is mainly for embedded
>> use. It doesn't mean I don't think they're good and useful, but it does limit
>> the possible size of the community in my view.
>>
>> Since we are talking about how to get the largest widest community possible
>> for DPDK, it could require doing things a bit differently from how many
>> low-level tools have historically done things.
A look at gmane, http://dir.gmane.org/gmane.comp.networking.dpdk.devel, 
confirms the explosion of interest in DPDK in the last 6 months with 
postings up to almost 70/day.  There is no problem with lack of interest 
in DPDK nor is there a need to change the mechanics of hosting the 
source to widen the audience. The case for DPDK is really compelling, 
the idea for reducing the HW complexity by accelerating switch functions 
on commodity HW is a fantastic benefit. Easily integrated accelerated 
programmable switch functions is a great advantage as well.

I do think there may be an argument for increasing the number of 
reviewers/maintainers or subdivide according to ares of interest perhaps 
into 4 categories:
1. PMD drivers
2. librte core
3. applications
4. vhost

--TFH

>>
> Why?
>
> Contributors to GCC: ~600 (based on svn) review
> Contrubutors to glibc : ~300 (based on git) review
> Contributors to binutils: ~600
> Contributors to busybox: ~300
>
> Contributors to DPDK: ~125
>
> Now I grant you that dpdk is a newer, much more niche project, but its
> disingenuous to state that we _have_ to do things differently to reach a wider
> audience.  We can, but its by no means a prerequisite to gainining a wider
> audience.
>


-- 
Thomas F. Herbert