[Lustre-discuss] [wc-discuss] Re: Lustre and cross-platform portability

tao.peng at emc.com tao.peng at emc.com
Thu May 3 03:03:43 PDT 2012 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Roman Grigoryev [mailto:Roman_Grigoryev at xyratex.com]
> Sent: Thursday, May 03, 2012 5:45 PM
> To: Peng, Tao
> Cc: adilger at whamcloud.com; wc-discuss at whamcloud.com; lustre-discuss at lists.lustre.org; lustre-
> devel at lists.lustre.org
> Subject: Re: [Lustre-discuss] [wc-discuss] Re: Lustre and cross-platform portability
> 
> Hi Tao,
Hi Roman,

> 
> I'm not know how linux developers approve patches. But, logically,
> because Lustre is big enough project and use kernel subsystems then it
> should be tested after kernel changes on kernel side too. In  other case
> (without testing) we can observer situation when Lustre built ok but
> doesn't work.
Now I see what you are worrying about. All code submitted to Linux kernel will be tested, and also patches later merged. It's just that kernel is a different place than Lustre git tree. We are not allowed to put test scripts into kernel tree. So all test code will remain in Whamcloud tree. But we will run the same tests against kernel code as well. One of our goal is to keep kernel client code in sync with Whamcloud tree as much as possible, so that the same code will be tested with older kernels as well.

> 
> I don't know goal of adding Lustre to kernel and, possible,this
> situation could be acceptable from your point of view.
> 
Untested code is buggy and useless. We certainly don't want it either.

Thanks,
Tao

> Thanks,
> 	Roman
> 
> On 04/27/2012 04:33 PM, tao.peng at emc.com wrote:
> > Hi Roman,
> >
> > Not sure if I misunderstand your question, but we won't push lustre/tests/* files to kernel.
> >We only push client code and any tests will be executed out side of kernel
> >
> > Cheers,
> > Tao
> > ________________________________________
> > From: Roman Grigoryev [Roman_Grigoryev at xyratex.com]
> > Sent: Friday, April 27, 2012 6:25 PM
> > To: Peng, Tao
> > Cc: adilger at whamcloud.com; wc-discuss at whamcloud.com; lustre-discuss at lists.lustre.org; lustre-
> devel at lists.lustre.org
> > Subject: Re: [Lustre-discuss] [wc-discuss] Re: Lustre and cross-platform portability
> >
> > Tao,Andreas,all,
> >
> > What is your plan in test/test framework changes from the point of view
> > of integration to kernel? As i know, kernel.org has his own test
> > infrastructure and his own test framework.
> >
> > I'm sorry if it's incorrect place for this question.
> >
> > Thanks,
> >         Roman
> >
> > On 04/27/2012 02:15 PM, tao.peng at emc.com wrote:
> >> Hi Andreas,
> >>
> >>> -----Original Message-----
> >>> From: Andreas Dilger [mailto:adilger at whamcloud.com]
> >>> Sent: Friday, April 27, 2012 11:54 AM
> >>> To: Peng, Tao
> >>> Cc: <wc-discuss at whamcloud.com>; <lustre-devel at lists.lustre.org>; <lustre-discuss at lists.lustre.org>
> >>> Subject: Re: [wc-discuss] Re: Lustre and cross-platform portability
> >>>
> >>> On 2012-04-26, at 20:23, <tao.peng at emc.com> wrote:
> >>>> Thank you very much for bringing it up in LUG and getting all these positive support from
> community.
> >>>
> >>> Tao,
> >>> Yes it does look promising.
> >>>
> >>>>> To revive this thread, based on discussion at the LUG TWG:
> >>>>> - there was general consensus that cleaning up the Lustre client
> >>>>>  (and server) code was very desirable to do
> >>>>> - migrating libcfs to emulate the Linux kernel APIs is also usable.
> >>>>>  Ken mentioned that there is relatively little conflict between
> >>>>>  the Linux kernel and the MacOS kernel, and the same for WinNT, so
> >>>>>  they could use the same function names as Linux without problems.
> >>>> I created LU-1346 (http://jira.whamcloud.com/browse/LU-1346) to track libcfs cleanup work.
> >>>
> >>> OK
> >>>
> >>>>> - there was no objection to converting the Lustre code from spaces
> >>>>>  to tabs.  My proposal was that build/checkpatch.pl could require
> >>>>>  tabs immediately, and new patches should be submitted with tabs
> >>>>>  on all new/modified lines (and optionally all lines on small
> >>>>>  functions to avoid messy formatting).  This will avoid issues
> >>>>>  with current patches in flight, and also avoid "git annotate"
> >>>>>  showing the jumbo replace-all-spaces-with-tabs patch for every
> >>>>>  line in Lustre, and I think a good fraction of lines will be
> >>>>>  updated in the next 9-12 months or more.  As we approach the
> >>>>>  actual time for upstream kernel submission is close, then we can
> >>>>>  make a final effort to clean up remaining lines in idle code
> >>>>>  (which will also be unlikely to conflict with existing work).
> >>>> While tabs are the main coding style difference between Lustre and kernel, there are a few minor
> >>> change that is needed as well. I think we need to do following to match kernel coding style:
> >>>> 1. Lustre uses expandtab while kernel requires tabs
> >>>
> >>> Right.
> >>>
> >>>> 2. Lustre has vim syntax rules in most source files, which need to be removed
> >>>
> >>> They should be replaced with explicit vim and enacts syntax rules that have the kernel indent
> style
> >>> instead.  If we could get syntax rules that embodied more of the coding style than just
> indentation,
> >>> that would be even better.
> >>>
> >> But we do need to remove them before submitting to kernel, right? And if we enforce checkpatch.pl
> on every patch applied, IMHO there is not much benefit to have syntax rules on every file, not to
> mention that it is explicitly forbidden in kernel coding style (Documentation/CodingStyle, Chapter 18:
> Editor modelines and other cruft).
> >>
> >> BTW, instead of just enabling tabs, how about changing checkpatch.pl to latest kernel version to
> make sure all future patches follow kernel coding styles?
> >>
> >>>> 3. Lustre uses a slightly different comment style, which need to be changed to kernel style
> >>>
> >>> This is DOxygen style formatting.  I had forgotten about this. We had in the past used this inline
> >>> formatting for producing some documentation, but I'd need to ask about whether there is still a
> need
> >>> for this today. In the meantime, please leave the comment style as-is.
> >>>
> >> OK.
> >>
> >>>
> >>>> I created LU-1347 (http://jira.whamcloud.com/browse/LU-1347) to track the coding style changes.
> >>>>
> >>>>> There is some hope that the kernel maintainers will not require
> >>>>> all of the Lustre macros to be removed, but we can deal with this
> >>>>> on a case-by-case basis.
> >>>>>
> >>>> IMO, we can divide macros to three groups (or more?):
> >>>> 1. Old kernel support macros, kernel maintainers are clear that they won't accept it.
> >>>
> >>> Yes, but we need to maintain this in the external Lustre tree for years after Lustre would be
> accepted
> >>> into mainline, since it would not be in vendor kernels (which a majority of Lustre users would be
> >>> using).
> >>>
> >>> For such compat macros we need to make an effort to keep the upstream code as close as possible to
> the
> >>> external tree, so patches have the most chance of applying.
> >>>
> >> I agree. We should minimize maintenance effort for it. And as you suggested, we can put as many of
> these compat macros into places like linux_compat.h as possible and have Lustre code use latest kernel
> APIs, so that most maintenance effort for old kernel support would be to keep linux_compat.h uptodate.
> For compact macros that cannot be cleaned up this way, we will have to pay the extra efforts. And of
> course the cleanup will be an incremental process and macros will be dealt with in a case-by-case
> basis.
> >>
> >>>> 2. For macros to mark out server code, kernel maintainers can accept it. But I think we need to
> make
> >>> sure we don't do it too intrusive.
> >>>
> >>> Sure, and we also need to make sure the ongoing maintenance effort to keep the code working is not
> too
> >>> much either.
> >>>
> >>> I'm OK with incremental patches that more cleanly split the client and server code (structures,
> >>> headers, etc) if that improves the code structure and readability.
> >>>
> >> I agree that we can do some incremental patches to split client and server code. But I hope we only
> do it when it is trivial and simple. IMHO if we want to entirely split client/server code, it will be
> large code structure change. Since kernel maintainers already agreed on HAVE_SERVER_SUPPORT, how about
> we keep going that way at first? And we can make some split wherever it is simple and clear. And we
> will try to make code structure as clear/readable as possible. Then when we summit code for review, if
> kernel maintainers still don't like it, we do the large restructuring. Does it make sense?
> >>
> >>>> 3. Lustre feature macros, we can convert them to Kconfig macros.
> >>>
> >>> Sure. Note that some of them may be obsolete, so before you spend too much time cleaning them up,
> >>> please post a list to Jira. Maybe some of them can be dropped entirely.
> >>>
> >> Thanks. I will do as you suggested when it comes to converting them to Kconfig macros.
> >>
> >> Cheers,
> >> Tao
> >>
> >>>>> On 2012-03-14, at 7:31 PM, Andreas Dilger wrote:
> >>>>>> Whamcloud and EMC are jointly investigating how to be able to contribute the Lustre client code
> >>> into
> >>>>> the upstream Linux kernel.
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> As a prerequisite to this, EMC is working to clean up the Lustre client code to better match
> the
> >>>>> kernel coding style, and one of the anticipated major obstacles to upstream kernel submission is
> >>> the
> >>>>> heavy use of code abstraction via libcfs for portability to other operating systems (most
> notably
> >>>>> MacOS and WinNT, but also for liblustre, and potentially *BSD).
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> I have no information that the WinNT project will ever be released by Oracle,
> >>>>>
> >>>>> [revised] and the MacOS client needs significant work to update it to the latest version of
> Lustre,
> >>>>> and to get it landed into the Lustre repo,
> >>>>>
> >>>>>> so the libcfs portability layer is potentially exacting a high cost in code maintenance and
> >>>>> complexity (CLIO being a prime example) for no apparent benefit.  Similarly, the liblustre
> client
> >>>>> needs a portability layer for userspace, and suffers from the same apparent lack of interest or
> >>> users.
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> I'd like to get some feedback from the Lustre community about removing the libcfs abstraction
> >>>>> entirely, or possibly restructuring it to look like the Linux kernel API, and having the other
> >>>>> platforms code against it as a Linux portability layer, like ZFS on Linux uses the Solaris
> >>> Portability
> >>>>> Layer (SPL) to avoid changing the core ZFS code.  A related topic is whether it would be better
> to
> >>>>> replace all cfs_* functions with standard Linux kernel functions en-masse, or migrate away from
> >>> cfs_*
> >>>>> functions slowly?
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> Also, we're planning on deprecating the liblustre client code, due to lack of interest/usage.
> The
> >>>>> current code is in disrepair, and we've been keeping it around for years without any benefit,
> and
> >>>>> while I was one of the strongest advocates for keeping it in our back pocket in case of future
> >>> needs,
> >>>>> I don't see that materializing in the future.
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> The liblustre code would be left in the tree for now, in case someone from the community is
> >>>>> interested to get it working and maintain it, and it may be updated on a best effort basis.  If
> >>> nobody
> >>>>> steps forward to do this work, the liblustre code would be deleted from the development branch
> in a
> >>>>> year or so.
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> Unfortunately, after starting this thread, I may not be able to reply to questions in a timely
> >>>>> manner due to vacation.  I look forward to a thread that concludes with unanimous agreement from
> >>> all
> >>>>> parties. :-)
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> Cheers, Andreas
> >>>>>> --
> >>>>>> Andreas Dilger                       Whamcloud, Inc.
> >>>>>> Principal Lustre Engineer            http://www.whamcloud.com/
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Cheers, Andreas
> >>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>
> >>
> >> _______________________________________________
> >> Lustre-discuss mailing list
> >> Lustre-discuss at lists.lustre.org
> >> http://lists.lustre.org/mailman/listinfo/lustre-discuss
> >
> >
> 
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