Re: Seeking recommendations wrt. target-specific packages
On Wed, Jun 8, 2016 at 10:32 AM, Paul Wise Wrote:
> On Wed, Jun 8, 2016 at 3:58 AM, J.T. Conklin wrote:
> > Before I go ahead with this, I'd appreciate some feedback on this
> > approach. Should we plan to use "distribution" or "component" for
> > target-specific packages. Or are we completely off track and we
> > should be considering an entirely different approach?
> It would be easier to answer this question if you were asking about a
> specific situation rather than a generic one. Please include some
> details about which software you are talking about, what the targets
> are and so on.
I apologize for my earlier explanation. Unfortunately I still have to
be somewhat guarded, as there are folks who think the most important
part of this project is the press release that will announce this to the
world, fully formed, like Venus on a half shell (needless to say, we
don't really "get" open source). But I'll do my best to provide more
details within the constraints I have today.
We produce network equipment devices, and the project to be released is
a framework to configure and manage the data plane.
There are three classes of components/packages. The first are completely
target-independent, the second are dependent on specific NPU hardware,
the third is tied to a specific hardware model.
So suppose there were three devices the X100, X200, and X300. The X100
and X200 have a NPU from vendor B, the X300 has a NPU from vendor M. All
three devices have the CPU architecture, so they all use common packages
for components of the first type. The X100 and X200 use the same driver
packages for NPU B, but the X300 uses a corresponding drivers for NPU M.
And each device has a set of packages with config files, etc. that are
specific for that specific hardware model.
Our hope is that when a user/admin installs the toplevel framework
package, only the appropriate NPU driver and target-specific packages
would be installed. For example, a user with an X100 wouldn't get the
X300 NPU driver and the X200 target-specific packages.
As Rebecca Palmer pointed out, there are some parallels with X11 and GPU
drivers to what we are trying to do.
--jtc
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