openstack/kayobe — Week of 2026-09-26

Networking engine. The nmstate engine gained check and diff mode support (~280 lines, backported to a stable branch), letting operators preview host network changes before applying them. A companion fix repairs nmstate zone synchronisation for cloud-init profiles. On the switch side, a new Dell SONiC configuration path landed and was backported twice, and Dell switch port descriptions now tolerate whitespace across three branches.

Check-mode and idempotency. Several changes harden dry runs: a guard that verifies Python is installed when running in check mode, skipping ntp clock sync commands under check mode, and new CI jobs exercising host-configure idempotency, diff checks, and a kayobe configuration dump. Together these tighten the "what would change?" story that the nmstate work depends on.

Fixes and packaging. Docker is now installed from PyPI under upper constraints (backported three ways), docker-buildx-plugin is pulled in for Kolla image builds, MichaelRigart.interfaces was bumped for a template bug, and wrong Kayobe path variables were corrected. Package installs were consolidated into a single script across three branches.

Tooling. CI now prefers IPv4 over IPv6 (five-branch sweep), ignores .md files, and the core reviewer list was trimmed in 1006924.