InfiniBand 2.6.17 merge plans

From: Roland Dreier
Date: Mon Mar 27 2006 - 14:54:55 EST


As we enter the second week of the 2.6.17 merge window, I thought it
might be helpful to give an update on what I'm thinking about the
remaining pending pieces. This is really to stimulate discussion --
if there's something that you think really should (or shouldn't) be
merged, let me know.

Of course bug fixes are always welcome and can be merged pretty much
any time -- that's the whole point of the stabilization period after
the merge window.

* PathScale ipath driver. In my git tree at

git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/roland/infiniband.git ipath

There is still ia64 build breakage and a lot of sparse endian
annotations to clean up before it's mergeable. Also, there are two
issues I still see:

- Working around the IB midlayer SMA (subnet management agent) /
implementation with a character device when ib_mad isn't loaded.
Maybe I'm off-base here objecting to this. Hal and Sean, as the
ib_mad guys, I'd be especially interested in your opinion of this.

- The driver depends on 64BIT && PCI_MSI, and is basically
x86_64-only for practical purposes. I think this is OK as far as
a merge goes, but it would be nice to be able to use a PCIe
device on any system with PCIe slots...

* RDMA CM. In my git tree at

git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/roland/infiniband.git rdma_cm

I think this is OK to merge, but I don't see much pull to get it in
right now. There are three consumers on the horizon:

- userspace RDMA CM, which exports the abstraction to userspace.
The feeling is that this interface needs more time to mature.

- NFS/RDMA. Not ready to merge right now.

- iSER. Maybe ready to merge -- I haven't heard anything recently.

My feeling is that without someone making a case for why this
should go in now, I'm going to hold off.

* IPoIB tunables. This is probably OK but I haven't seen any patches
yet, so we're running out time.

* SRP FMRs. I have a patch that I'm pretty happy with now, so I
think this will go in. This will need a lot of testing, or we may
have to turn it off by default for 2.6.17 final

So if you care about any of this, let me know what you think. And if
there's something not on this list and not in

git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/roland/infiniband.git for-2.6.17

please make sure I know about it, or it won't get merged.

Thanks,
Roland
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