[nfsv4] charter milestone dates, interop testing, and the pandemic

[David Noveck <[e-mail]>]

On Fri, Jul 10, 2020, 11:01 AM Chuck Lever <[e-mail]> wrote:

> Hi-
>
> Sorin brought this up explicitly yesterday, and I hinted at it in the
> last slide of the RPC/RDMA deck.
>
> The pandemic has made it challenging to host interop events like the
> NFS bake-a-thon. Currently the BAT planning team is discussing what
> the rest of 2020 will look like, and none of us work for a company
> that allows any travel for the foreseeable future, let alone hosting
> external events.
>
> We are beginning to consider virtual events to meet our interop needs
> but that is going to require planning and probably a little financing.
>
> Meeting the calendar date goals set in our charter is going to be
> difficult without interop testing. I propose that the WG revisit those
> dates, assuming that testing will get underway in the medium term but
> it is not likely to happen in earnest before the end of 2020.


This is good point.  Different items will be affected to different degrees
and I'd like each item owner to provide input regarding their expectations.

I don't think we need  a meeting to address this. What I will do is to
produce,  based on the milestones slide deck, is a new table with room to
address the schedule effect of the expected interop testing drought. I'll
send the table out tomorrow.

Once that is done, item owners and and others can post their versions of
the table, including revised target dates and we can discuss on the list.

In some cases, we will want to try to do meaningful Interoperability
testing without requiring either an in-person testing event (essentially
impossible now) or a virtual replacement (possible but not a sure thing).

This is of particular importance in cases, such as implementing the
suggestions in Sections 8.4.6 and 8.5.2 of
draft-dnoveck-nfsv4-security-needs,in which validating possible
implementation approaches has to happen early in document development.

Clients and servers can agree to  cooperate to provide Interoperability
testing.  In the case in which one of the parties is an encumbered form of
open source, there might be legal issues to address but these can be
addressed, given that it is to the benefit of both parties to get early
interpp testing done.


>
> --
> Chuck Lever
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> nfsv4 mailing list
> [e-mail]
> https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/nfsv4
>