From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Subject: Re: kci_build proposal From: "Mathieu Acher" MIME-Version: 1.0 Date: Fri, 29 May 2020 00:42:04 -0700 References: <7ho8q77i1t.fsf@baylibre.com> In-Reply-To: <7ho8q77i1t.fsf@baylibre.com> Message-ID: <18306.1590738124792037023@groups.io> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable List-ID: To: Kevin Hilman , kernelci@groups.io Dear all,=20 I'm glad to hear the ongoing effort about containerization (Docker + Pytho= n 3) of KernelCI.=20 I didn't know the existence of tuxbuild and I'm as curious as Kevin for ha= ving more details.=20 As an academic, we have some use cases that can further motivate the use o= f a "cloud-based solution". In 2017, we have developed TuxML (https://github.com/TuxML/ProjetIrma) whi= ch a solution with Docker and Python 3 for massively compiling kernel confi= gurations.=20 The "ml" part stands for statistical learning. So far, we have collected 2= 00K+ configurations with a distributed computing infrastructure (a kind of = cloud).=20 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-se= t options) and then perform some "tests" (in a broad sense).=20 We have two major use cases: * bug-finding related to configurations: we are able to locate faulty (co= mbinations of) options and even prevent/fix some failures at the Kconfig le= vel (more details here: https://hal.inria.fr/hal-02147012) * size prediction of a configuration (without compiling it) and identific= aton of options that influence size (more details here: https://hal.inria.f= r/hal-02314830)=20 In both cases, we need an infrastructure capable of compiling *any* config= uration of the kernel. For measuring the size, we need to control all factors, like gcc version a= nd so forth. Docker was helpful here to have a canonical environment.=20 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, l= eading to some false-positive failures. Have you encountered this situation?=20 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.=20 We plan to modernize TuxML with KernelCI toolchain, especially if it's pos= sible to deploy it on several distributed machines.=20 Can I somehow participate in the next call? Mainly to learn and as a first= step to contribute in this very nice project.=20 Best,=20 Mathieu Acher=20