Re: Stmmac in the netdev CI ?

[Maxime Chevallier <maxime.chevallier@bootlin.com>]

Hi

+netdev@

On 9/14/26 22:30, Andrew Lunn wrote:
> On Mon, Sep 14, 2026 at 10:45:57AM +0200, Maxime Chevallier wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> sorry this is off-list, I don't know what's the correct channel for
>> this kind of discussion, maybe directly in the nipa GH ?

[Bringing this to netdev@, for the context, this is me considering the addition
of stmmac to the netdev CI infra]

>>
>> As part of the stmmac maintenance work I've undertaken, I've setup
>> a local CI for stmmac, allowing to make sure we detect breakages
>> early on, and on a good variety of HW platforms covering most variants
>> of the IP.
>>
>> As an experiment I've plugged that to netdev@, with nightly tests of submitted
>> series, and ajudsted my infra so that I can fully build + run the whole set
>> of patches under a few hours.
>>
>> The next logical step is to plug that to the netdev CI, but I have a few questions
>> for you :
>>
>> - I currently have 8 boards with stmmac on them, and 7 more on their way to me, so
>>   in total I'd be adding around 15 more devices to NIPA, is it OK to add 15 or
>>   should I somehow try to condense these results ?
> 
> Do you have enough interfaces on these boards you can have 4 pairs of
> boards with directly connected interfaces?

Most of the boards with a few rare exceptions are single-port, and for now they
are either facing non-stmmac embedded boards, or cheap USB<->Ethernet adapters
plugged to my testing infra. I still have a couple of devices that are reaching
the CI infra through a switch, but not for long.

I can run tests that involve configuring the peer :)

> 
>> - The current kselftest don't mean much for stmmac, I don't have any board that has
>>   RSS, queueing stuff also doesn't really apply, the meaningful ksft are mostly
>>   csum and timestamping.
> 
> Does kselftest at least do the correct thing and declare a skip? I
> guess most NICs don't actually have RSS and queue stuff.

It's a mix of both, some gracefully skip, some fail.

> 
>> I'd be happy to have stmmac plugged to NIPA though, I think it's quite a good
>> candidate for an embedded driver to run these, hopefully this could set the example
>> for other vendors...
> 
> I also hope it is something bootlin can turn into a training course,
> so more vendors setup their own runners.

It can at least be a good topic for netdevconf / LPC / ELCE :)

Maxime