[Pkg-ofed-devel] Added libhfi1 repository to pkg-ofed, ITP #862754

[Jason Gunthorpe]

On Tue, May 16, 2017 at 03:38:56PM -0500, Brian Smith wrote:

> I’m sure that this was discussed off-list, but doesn’t rdma-core’s
> strategy kind of break the Debian guideline that shared libraries
> should be one-per-package?

That is one binary package per shared library, not necessarily one
source package. The packaging Benjamin/etc are working on continues to
produce the usual binary packages.

However, a major change is that the verbs plugin providers are bundled
together into a single package. Plugins are specially exempted by
Debian policy:

  Shared object files (often .so files) that are not public libraries,
  that is, they are not meant to be linked to by third party executables
  (binaries of other packages), should be installed in subdirectories of
  the /usr/lib directory. Such files are exempt from the rules that
  govern ordinary shared libraries, except that they must not be
  installed executable and should be stripped.[88]

However, there has been some question what to do with the new
now-linkable mlx5..

> There are multiple vendors of many libraries in rdma-core. The
> various libibverbs providers are probably not going to coordinate
> their driver release schedules with each other.

We are following the same model as the kernel, with more or less,
timed releases. Everyone seems happy so far based on the feedback I've
received.

If a vendor needs something backported into a distro then they need to
get their patch upstream then contact the distro(s) to backport the
patch, just like for the kernel.

I think you would be very welcome to review and contribute to the
rdma-core debian packaging, Benjamin recently posted a TODO list:

http://marc.info/?l=linux-rdma&m=149435179417813&w=2

I also gave a presentation on rdma-core at the last workshop that
might be informative:

https://youtu.be/O-lFp9nbdgE

Jason