KernelCI Labs Working Group

Following discussions at the KernelCI Workshop 2025 in Amsterdam, we're establishing
a Labs Working Group to address the challenges of executing testing through hardware
labs in KernelCI.

## Working Group Scope

The Labs WG will focus on improving how KernelCI integrates with and manages 
hardware testing laboratories. Currently, we support only LAVA, but there's growing
interest in expanding backend support and addressing various infrastructure challenges.


## Key Areas of Focus

- Labgrid Integration: Design and implement labgrid backend support alongside existing
LAVA integration
- CI Ecosystem Labs: Better support for vendor labs (TI, Qualcomm, etc.) through improved
events API and shared rootfs images.
- Alternative Backends: Explore integration with other lab management systems like Tuxtest
for virtualized testing
- Lab Health Dashboard: Develop tools to monitor lab status and infrastructure issues
- Failure Classification: Improve detection and reporting of infrastructure failures vs. actual
test failures
- Lab Admin Guidelines: Create standards for lab administrators on device type differentiation
and configuration facilitating accessing the same hardware across multiple labs.
- Job Prioritization: Implement smarter job scheduling
- Dependency Management: Avoid running dependent tests when prerequisites fail (e.g.,
skip NFS-dependent tests if NFS boot fails)

The Labs WG will work closely with the Infrastructure Working Group and Technical
Steering Committee to ensure our efforts align with KernelCI's overall architecture and goals.

Based on the interest during the workshop, we’d need to cover the West Coast timezone
as well. So an initial proposal for these meetings is starting next week on Thursday,
September 11 at 7:30am PDT/4:30pm CEST.

We invite all interested community members, especially those running or managing
hardware labs, to participate in this working group. Please reply to this thread if
you're interested in contributing or have specific use cases and requirements to discuss.

Best,

- Gus

--
Gustavo Padovan

Collabora Ltd.