[ovs-dev] Bug#974588: openvswitch: DPDK 20.11 support and transition for bullseye

[Ben Pfaff]

[adding dev at openvswitch.org]

On Thu, Nov 12, 2020 at 04:09:20PM +0000, Luca Boccassi wrote:
> Source: openvswitch
> Version: 2.13.0+dfsg1-12
> Severity: normal
> X-Debbugs-CC: pkg-dpdk-devel at lists.alioth.debian.org christian.ehrhardt at canonical.com
> Tags: bullseye
> 
> Dear Openvswitch Maintainers,
> 
> We are scoping the src:dpdk 19.11 -> 20.11 transition. If possible,
> we'd really like to go to bullseye with the latest upstream LTS, as
> 19.11 is EOL at the end of next year.
> 
> OVS support for DPDK 20.11 will be released upstream in v2.15, which is
> due for release on February 15 [1].
> Bullseye transition freeze is on January 12 [2], so the dates
> don't align very well.
> 
> So we are looking to formulate a plan that you can agree with, to sort
> this out.
> 
> Based on experience, what Ubuntu usually does to meet release deadlines
> is to upload from git earlier than the release, so that all major
> incompatibilities can be sorted. And then after the freeze, once the
> release is officially out, do a final upgrade to the released version -
> since a similar enough version was uploaded from git, and at the end of
> a release cycle it's mostly bug fixes that land upstream, such an
> upload is acceptable.
> 
> So we'd like to propose the following ideas:
> 
> - between now and December: upload v2.14, to minimize the later jump
> - by the first week of January: upload 2.15~git from the tip of the
> master branch to experimental
> - stabilize and sort eventual build issues
> - upload dpdk 20.11 and ovs 2.15~git to unstable
> - upload 2.15 proper in February as a bug fix upload to unstable
> 
> What do you think? Does this sound like a workable plan?
> 
> We are of course happy to help - Ubuntu will go through the exact same
> process for 21.04, so a lot of the work is "shared".
> 
> Thank you!
> 
> -- 
> Kind regards,
> Luca Boccassi
> 
> [1] https://docs.openvswitch.org/en/latest/internals/release-process/
> [2] https://release.debian.org/bullseye/freeze_policy.html