[dpdk-dev] Techboard - minutes of meeting 2021-07-14

[dpdk-dev] Techboard - minutes of meeting 2021-07-14

[Bruce Richardson]

Attendees
---------

* Aaron Conole
* Bruce Richardson
* Ferruh Yigit
* Hemant Agrawal
* Honnappa Nagarahalli
* Jerin Jacob
* Kevin Traynor
* Konstantin Ananyev
* Stephen Hemminger
* Thomas Monjalon

Minutes
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1. Readout on survey on next-net maintainership

* Ferruh provided a summary of results of a survey he carried out with
  driver maintainers and techboard for feedback on the next-net tree he
  maintains.
* Unfortunately response rate was very low
* Key feedback received in survey:
  * working with patches on mailing list is found to be difficult, with
    large volumes of mails
  * submitters found it awkward to have to do patchwork updates manually on
    sending new patch revisions
  * request for more user-friendly tooling workflow

* Techboard held a discussion on a possible trial of using other tools for
  development workflow in the future. Largely requires a tree maintainer to
  volunteer to run such a trial for a release period to investigate how it
  works and what issues are discovered.

2. ABI/API compatibility and expanded ABI-stability window

* Proposal has been sent out to TB and maintainers on increasing the ABI
  compatibility period to 2 years from 1 year.
  * Lack of general feedback on this
* Work is ongoing to identify and address ABI concerns within DPDK project.
  Maintainers are asked to help with identifying issues in their own areas
  of expertise.
* Discussion was help on changing to 2-year ABI period immediately for
  21.11 or to do so after a review next year. No clear consensus emerged

* ACTION: Ferruh/Thomas to send out patch to DPDK mailing list on ABI:
  * To clarify 2-year proposal specifically
  * To expand discussion wider to the whole development community.

3. US DPDK Event

* the lower than expected attendance numbers was noted
* some discussion on selection criteria and avoidance of very
  vendor-specific content for future events
* general hope within TB for in-person events rather than virtual next
  year!

4. Techboard Membership

* Hemant led some initial discussion on latest document draft

* ACTION: All-TB-Members, (re)review latest document on Techboard
  governance.