[ANN] Containers to run Netdev CI tests locally

[Matthieu Baerts <matttbe@kernel.org>]

Hello,

TL;DR: containers are now available with all dependencies to easily
execute all static, unit, and functional tests in an environment closed
to the Netdev CI one:

- https://github.com/orgs/linux-netdev/packages

- https://github.com/linux-netdev/nipa/wiki/Running-Netdev-CI-tests-locally


                             -- ** -- ** --

As already mentioned on this list, and repeated at the last Netdev Conf,
developers are expected to validate the same tests as the ones executed
by the Netdev CI before any submissions. This includes all static, unit
and functional tests linked to the net subsystem -- and impacted by the
modifications --, but also LLM reviews. The goal is to reduce the number
of revisions and general traffic on this mailing list, not to overload
maintainers and reviewers even more.

A wiki page has been added to cover this and explain how to validate the
different tests:

  https://github.com/linux-netdev/nipa/wiki/Running-Netdev-CI-tests-locally

To help developers, containers are now built, packing all the required
dependencies to run these tests in order to run the tests in an
environment that would be as close as possible to the CI one. The goal
is to have an environment that is easy to maintain -- no heavy
optimisations to reduce the images size -- but also easy to use. In
short, people (and non-humans) can continue to use the different tools
as before, but add a prefix to the different commands to execute them
from a container, e.g.

  alias run="${nipa}/docker/selftests/run.sh"
  run vng --build
  run make headers
  (...)


Feedback on this is welcome. Do not hesitate to report issues on the
GitHub project (or here) and share fixes!

Note: currently only 'docker' is supported, but 'podman' can be used,
and plain 'chroot' as well, see the wiki. Patches are welcome!

Also, the following page has been modified to include more tips, visual
improvements, and references to the new containers:


https://github.com/linux-netdev/nipa/wiki/How-to-run-netdev-selftests-CI-style

Cheers,
Matt
--
For the Netdev Foundation