From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: from smtp.kernel.org (aws-us-west-2-korg-mail-alma10-1.taild15c8.ts.net [100.103.45.18]) (using TLSv1.2 with cipher ECDHE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384 (256/256 bits)) (No client certificate requested) by smtp.subspace.kernel.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id 3B32A37AA65 for ; Thu, 18 Jun 2026 12:31:55 +0000 (UTC) Authentication-Results: smtp.subspace.kernel.org; arc=none smtp.client-ip=100.103.45.18 ARC-Seal:i=1; a=rsa-sha256; d=subspace.kernel.org; s=arc-20240116; t=1781785917; cv=none; b=MSMi/fcoqlV14RSMwljlSV+Ulh8ZfBbiStzaD9sMP0Sm6OmsmAcPxM3LFj2vcpOe5HHSLAem0daVTG/z/LW3VA86urJzGddjOQt/Js1S41W1RbQh7iiOZsbfHol/tdYMPBrcamxYC9HtrN4JhaJ9vH6N3bL4VDCSlhu2tiZZ83Y= ARC-Message-Signature:i=1; a=rsa-sha256; d=subspace.kernel.org; s=arc-20240116; t=1781785917; c=relaxed/simple; bh=15Q3rThKWRDaGWM76ggHs+WPsJjORKUGkMz1I5VhOHQ=; h=Message-ID:Subject:From:To:Cc:Date:In-Reply-To:References: Content-Type:MIME-Version; b=WhG/+OJQs8i0VwI/aofmHLZsJPzJRIl9TjZGRfR4xKlkhOq5IDtQJLlBrF8IbMcsoyDpgq6E4u1+8oAh0ThT6wtmWMuXkrcXugLFroxQwS7g37xUCKGteSbUpWCgd8zvnol3jA9ukN19qreUSH9/SDicj+5APNs9FnLeur4Ek4k= ARC-Authentication-Results:i=1; smtp.subspace.kernel.org; dkim=pass (2048-bit key) header.d=kernel.org header.i=@kernel.org header.b=JAiypmEK; arc=none smtp.client-ip=100.103.45.18 Authentication-Results: smtp.subspace.kernel.org; dkim=pass (2048-bit key) header.d=kernel.org header.i=@kernel.org header.b="JAiypmEK" Received: by smtp.kernel.org (Postfix) id 0A7421F01558; Thu, 18 Jun 2026 12:31:55 +0000 (UTC) Received: by smtp.kernel.org (Postfix) with ESMTPSA id 87EA41F00AC4; Thu, 18 Jun 2026 12:31:53 +0000 (UTC) DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=kernel.org; s=k20260515; t=1781785914; bh=pKAEs6O29Rns+nBMP3A6fcU2JX8DBp8CQRz5BIQY3YE=; h=Subject:From:To:Cc:Date:In-Reply-To:References; b=JAiypmEKwGJiZN3F59Mc9YRCG8wfR4quaqa5Ngi30iRbhlsH0LwC4+QB6VRAUFX/L AJIhASCiSEA/kdGwp+KRtlMwtY7zzWwX4t8fJkNJDztVizjBozC01LV84xeOBgr+Fv cTdLDA6AdJhHPEtQQbgxasYYxwT0YlaHh1Sikh2M2M+XZoemtqUeKDTR6x67Rk5f2A wGa3BJ/KfXIFiwlqSSPbao6/EZQuiDiWISiPPVRc31sspYPbHiwJPWKWcfVyMFyoPP F9rvgRr3bgWscBoRVuXggOMNKn+HGw2Yf/nmeW6NboyOVSJovOx8/NYg68SOzRm2do 5pEwWHYq949fA== Message-ID: Subject: Re: kdevops-ng: graduating kdevops beyond Ansible From: Jeff Layton To: Daniel Gomez , Luis Chamberlain , Chuck Lever Cc: kdevops@lists.linux.dev, tools@kernel.org, GOST , Josef Bacik , Amir Goldstein , Carlos Maiolino , Chandan Babu R , David Sterba , Song Liu , Scott Mayhew , Shin'ichiro Kawasaki , Konstantin Ryabitsev Date: Thu, 18 Jun 2026 08:31:51 -0400 In-Reply-To: <9f64bee9-ecc3-4587-9645-2190223cbc4e@kernel.org> References: <9f64bee9-ecc3-4587-9645-2190223cbc4e@kernel.org> Autocrypt: addr=jlayton@kernel.org; prefer-encrypt=mutual; keydata=mQINBE6V0TwBEADXhJg7s8wFDwBMEvn0qyhAnzFLTOCHooMZyx7XO7dAiIhDSi7G1NPxw 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Evolution 3.60.2 (3.60.2-1.fc44) Precedence: bulk X-Mailing-List: tools@linux.kernel.org List-Id: List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: MIME-Version: 1.0 On Thu, 2026-06-18 at 11:30 +0200, Daniel Gomez wrote: > kdevops is a framework for Linux kernel development and test automation. > Its core features, namely workflow reproducibility, variability, and > scalability, are delivered through Kconfig, the variability language, > and Ansible, which provides host and guest idempotency along with > workflow orchestration at scale, whether on baremetal, local VMs, or > the cloud. >=20 > kdevops supports rolling distributions such as Debian testing, Fedora, > and openSUSE. Recently we extended Nix support, which raised the > question: how do we drive Nix's declarative language from Ansible? We > answered by wiring Nix in under Ansible and its templates, as one more > way to declare host and guest environments. But that was the wrong > framing: we had bolted Nix onto today's toolkit instead of rethinking > it. Reproducibility and idempotency now come from Nix by construction, > so I think Ansible's original reason for being in kdevops falls away. > The better question is: how do we keep kdevops's core principles, lean > on Nix, and drop Ansible? >=20 > What remains once you do is not the configuration management plane. It > is development workflow orchestration: build QEMU, build the kernel, > build a guest rootfs/closure, boot it, run a test, collect results, > diff against a baseline. That work is imperative and sequenced, work > for a workflow engine, which is where tools like Windmill [1] come in. > Windmill calls itself as "the fastest workflow engine" and an > "open-source developer platform to power your entire infra and turn > scripts into webhooks, workflows and UIs." Choosing to move kdevops > onto Windmill would keep what made kdevops kdevops, namely workflows, > quick bring-ups, baselines, and A/B regression detection, while trading > Kconfig, Make, Ansible, and host-distro provisioning for typed > run-forms, flows as code, and a worker queue. Nix supplies the > environment, much like a container or venv/poetry, along with the guest > OS system closure: declarative and portable. Windmill orchestrates the > whole pipeline end to end, graduating kdevops into a fully reproducible, > scalable, and configurable kernel-development framework, with both a UI > and a CLI, that runs locally or in the cloud. Defined as code and driven > by schedules and triggers, the same flows also make it a continuous > integration pipeline. Because steps can be written in any language > Windmill supports, including Ansible, Bash, Go, Python, and Rust, > developers can not only use kdevops but extend it with their own > scripts, turning it into a workflow hub. Note that choosing this path > does not mean NixOS is required on the controller node; Nix is simply a > runtime dependency that can be installed alongside your distro of > choice. >=20 > It'd be good to know what folks think about the possibility of evolving > kdevops in this direction, deprecating Ansible along with Kconfig and > Makefiles in favor of the new approach. To that end, I suggest a demo > day where I can show why I think this is the next step worth taking, and > whether it's a tradeoff users and maintainers are willing to make. > > If this is of interest and you'd like a look, I've ported equivalents of > bootlinux (direct boot), qemu-build, and the systemd/QEMU bringup (QSU), > plus an fstests run for XFS in the proof-of-concept demo project [2]. > You can also find some screenshots in [3]. >=20 > A note on licensing. Windmill's engine is AGPLv3; its OpenFlow flow > format and client libraries are Apache-2.0. kdevops-ng runs Windmill > unmodified and self-hosted as a separate service, and the flows and > scripts are kdevops-ng's own copyleft-next-0.3.1 code, executed by > Windmill rather than derived from it, so there shouldn't be any > licensing concerns. >=20 > [1] https://windmill.dev > [2] https://github.com/dagomez137/kdevops-ng > [3] https://github.com/dagomez137/kdevops-ng/tree/main/screenshots Some thoughts: I'd be interested to see the demo. It's a little hard to make a judgment about moving it in this direction without knowing specifically what it would look like. I took a quick look at the git repo and the windmill site, but I don't really "get it" yet. I do agree that kconfig/makefiles are not really suited to this task. We've made it work, but it's a bit of a square peg in a round hole. One of the things I liked is that kdevops spawns a normal (familiar) distro, and that makes it easy to get in and troubleshoot when things are broken. If I have to learn how to operate in yet another new distro, I suppose I can, but it doesn't excite me. OTOH, the goal here is kernel testing, so userland really doesn't matter too much. --=20 Jeff Layton