Minutes of techboard meeting, 2025-10-01

[Bruce Richardson]

TB Members Attending: 7/11
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- Bruce
- Thomas
- Kevin
- Konstantin
- Morten
- Jerin
- Maxime

NOTE: The Technical Board meetings take place every second Wednesday at 3 pm UTC
on https://zoom-lfx.platform.linuxfoundation.org/meeting/96459488340?password=d808f1f6-0a28-4165-929e-5a5bcae7efeb
Meetings are public, and DPDK community members are welcome to attend.
Agenda and minutes can be found at http://core.dpdk.org/techboard/minutes
The next meeting will happen on October 15

Agenda
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* LTS Maintainers,
  - Project is currently short of LTS Maintainers. 
  - Enquiries are ongoing to find additional maintainers. 
  - Volunteers are welcome
  - Mentoring and support from existing maintainers is available for new maintainers

* Use of FAST_FREE and multi-buffer/scattered mbuf flags
  - The flags for enabling fast-free and supporting multi-mbuf packets are
    now documented incompatible
  - Previously they were not defined as incompatible, but that seems to
    have been assumed for some usages.
  - Techboard discussed how best to resolve this incompatibility with
    regards to:
    - ensuring correctness
    - avoiding major churn to DPDK code
    - avoiding churn to end-user code
  - Options discussed:
    1 change definition back to not have the settings incompatible: this
      necessitates checking drivers for correctness
    2 keep as explicitly incompatible and report error if both specified:
      this could break end-user apps, and requires changes to example apps
    3 drop the fast-free flag if multi-segment mbufs are also specified:
      "hides" the issue, but probably minimises changes. Would need to
      decide whether the dropping of flag done in drivers vs ethdev level.
      Pros and cons to both options. Needs clear documenting.
  - No firm decision reached, will discuss more over email.

Recurring item list Discussion
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TB reviewed our standard list of recurring items for updates.

* Examples to remove:
  - it was noted that work is being done on DCB functionality, and
    separating it from VMDQ.
  - follow up with patch author (as presumed knowledgable in this area) as
    to whether we need to keep both vmdq and vmdq+dcb sample apps.

* Doc Maintenance:
  - Project had employed a technical writer to help cleanup docs, but this
    contract has now finished
  - Most output patches from the contract have been merged but there is at
    least one set that needs futher update
  - Discussed use of AI for documentation updates
    - for mechanical updates AI may be of help
    - skepticism of usefulness beyond that

* Community Lab:
  - Patrick provided a short update on lab work:
    - DTS Development ongoing
    - Team at UNH has produced some new introductory videos on setting up
      and using DTS.
  - Process has just started on planning for lab priorities for 2026, in
    order to have that in place for end-of-year.