Networking-vpp 20.01 for VPP 20.01 is now available

Written for networking-vpp by Jerome Tollet on 2020-02-28

Hello All,
We'd like to invite you to try out Networking-vpp 20.01.
As many of you may already know, VPP is a fast user space forwarder based
on the DPDK toolkit. VPP uses vector packet processing algorithms to
minimize the CPU time spent on each packet to maximize throughput.
Networking-vpp is a ML2 mechanism driver that controls VPP on your control
and compute hosts to provide fast L2 forwarding under Neutron.
This latest version of Networking-vpp is updated to work with VPP 20.01.
In this release, we've made the below changes:
- We've dropped support for Python 2.7 and updated the code to work with
  Python 3.6 or later.
- We've updated the code to be compatible with VPP 20.01 API changes.
- We've added VPP API versioning support using 2 data files.
  They are API whitelist file and API CRC manifest file. At startup, the vpp-agent
  will check to see if the API signature is compatible with the installed VPP.
  Also, at runtime, only the whitelisted API calls will be allowed.

- We've fixed an issue with the eventlet that caused problems when binding tap
  interfaces into Linux bridge

- We've been doing the usual round of bug fixes, clean-ups and updates.
  The code will work with VPP 20.01 and the OpenStack Stein release.
The README [1] explains how you can try out VPP with Networking-vpp using
devstack: the devstack plugin will deploy the mechanism driver and VPP
and should give you a working system with a minimum of hassle.
We will be continuing our development for VPP's 20.05 release.
We welcome anyone who would like to come help us.
--
Jerome, Ian & Naveen