Community CI Meeting Minutes - March 20, 2025

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

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March 20, 2025
Attendees
1. Patrick Robb
2. Paul Szczepanek
3. Luca Vizzarro
4. Cody Cheng
5. Aaron Conole
6. Matthew McGovern
7. Dean Marx

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Minutes

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General Announcements
* RC3 has been released
   * Next-dts has been pulled to main
   * DPDK 25.03 will be released in a few days
* Pw-ci project: Aaron is syncing his internal repo to the upstream
   * Adds recheck support, and other reporting scripts

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CI Status

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UNH-IOL Community Lab
* New DTS:
   * Running a broader set of “new DTS” tests on Intel XL710 and CX5 NICs
now:
      * Unified Packet
      * Promiscuous Support
      * PMD Buffer Scatter
      * Dynamic Queue Config
      * Dynamic Config
      * MAC Filter
* Cody has begun work on setting up a VM which will be locked to the
minimum kernel version supported by DPDK - this system will do build tests.
   * According to DPDK docs, that is kernel version 4.19, but it links to a
kernel mirror site which indicates a newer minimum supported kernel - Cody
is going to reach out on the mailing list for clarification
* The patch adding patch series dependency support to DPDK Patchwork has
been accepted:
https://patchwork.ozlabs.org/project/patchwork/list/?series=442332&state=*
   * We will need to work with Ali after the next patchwork release to get
the DPDK Patchwork instance updated to the latest release
* Build failure emails:
   * Build failure emails were not including the Meson and Ninja logs due
to a bad HTTP server reconfiguration we had deployed. This issue is now
resolved and we see the most recent build failure comes with the relevant
logs.

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Intel Lab
* None

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Github Actions
* Cirrus CI: No one is working on the FreeBSD support, so unit tests still
fail, and this decreases the value added by Cirrus CI
* Working on an update which will associate a run number with a recheck
request

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AWS
* They are working on their test-report email templating script
* There was some conversation at the joint Governing Board and Tech Board
meeting about platforms AWS will run from and their testing goals:
   * Platforms: includes x86 and ARM Graviton based systems
   * Goals: Will setup a CI lab which will target build and unit tests
first, then target some functional and performance testing with DTS.

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Loongarch Lab
* None


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DTS Improvements & Test Development
* DTS Packet Sniffer update:
   * Breaks the sniffer out into a new class which is run separately from
Scapy TG class
   * It can start/stop and collect packets whenever directed to do so via
the TestSuite API
   * Async sniffer will run throughout the entire testrun instead of
starting and stopping.
   * Adds a facility to trigger a stop condition for the sniffer (like stop
as soon as you sniff packet X)
      * This is not exposed via the TestSuite API currently
   * Currently Sniffer is integrated into the scapy class, but there is no
particular reason for this - it could reasonably be moved to the TestSuite
and exposed
* DTS Roadmap 25.07
   * Rte_flow
   * Performance TG and forwarding tests
   * Improved documentation
   * TestSuite API
      * Paul is interested in moving from the TestSuite class as API to a
“DPDK” API for DTS testsuites. This would involved committing to a stable
API. We would be able to change framework internals without breaking
testsuites.
      * The biggest advantage would be discoverability for a new test
writer who has not seen DTS before
   * Cloud environment support for DTS
   * VF Support
* VF support:
   * No movement on the VF support series
* TestSuite Development:
   * Dean has submitted updates for unified packet testsuite and checksum
offload testsuite which switches from matching packets on mac dst address
to relying on l4 port number.
* Testrun duration:
   * Perhaps we should profile the testsuites into different buckets and
add config options for running certain groups of tests
   * By keeping the sniffer process on the entire time, we will cut out a
lot of time waiting for sniffer to start and stop
   * One option would be to keep testpmd open through the entire testrun,
and just reset it for each testsuite without restarting it and going
through EAL bring up (takes a few seconds). On the other hand, the appeal
of restarting testpmd completely is we know it is totally reset.
      * Possible keep 1 testpmd shell per testsuite, and that testsuite is
responsible for cleaning up the shell properly in between testcases

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Any other business
* Azure: We got more details from Matthew about the DPDK testing goals for
Microsoft Azure
   * Environments: They can run testing on cloud instances based on Intel
x86, AMD x86, and ARM systems
   * Mellanox NICs are available to some cloud instances on Azure
   * They would like to run functional and performance tests and products
reports for those for dpdk.org
      * Performance tests: will be simple single and multi-queue testpmd
MPPS forwarding tests
   * They cannot commit to a report cadence right now, but discussed the
idea of releasing a report per DPDK release, as well as rolling reports on
main
* Next Meeting Apr 3, 2025

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