Re: kci_build proposal

["Mathieu Acher" <mathieu.acher@irisa.fr>]

Dear all, 

I'm glad to hear the ongoing effort about containerization (Docker + Python 3) of KernelCI. 
I didn't know the existence of tuxbuild and I'm as curious as Kevin for having more details. 

As an academic, we have some use cases that can further motivate the use of a "cloud-based solution".
In 2017, we have developed TuxML (https://github.com/TuxML/ProjetIrma) which a solution with Docker and Python 3 for massively compiling kernel configurations. 
The "ml" part stands for statistical learning. So far, we have collected 200K+ configurations with a distributed computing infrastructure (a kind of cloud). 
Our focus is to explore the configuration space of the Linux kernel in the large; we fed several config files (mainly with randconfig and some pre-set options) and then perform some "tests" (in a broad sense). 

We have two major use cases:
 * bug-finding related to configurations: we are able to locate faulty (combinations of) options and even prevent/fix some failures at the Kconfig level (more details here: https://hal.inria.fr/hal-02147012)
 * size prediction of a configuration (without compiling it) and identificaton of options that influence size (more details here: https://hal.inria.fr/hal-02314830) 

In both cases, we need an infrastructure capable of compiling *any* configuration of the kernel.
For measuring the size, we need to control all factors, like gcc version and so forth. Docker was helpful here to have a canonical environment. 
One issue we found is to build the right Docker image: some configurations of the kernel require specific tools and anticipating all can be tricky, leading to some false-positive failures.
Have you encountered this situation? 

In general, my colleagues at University of Rennes 1/Inria and I are really interested to be part of this new effort through discussions or technical contributions. 
We plan to modernize TuxML with KernelCI toolchain, especially if it's possible to deploy it on several distributed machines. 

Can I somehow participate in the next call? Mainly to learn and as a first step to contribute in this very nice project. 

Best, 

Mathieu Acher