[Pkg-zfsonlinux-devel] About downstream patches on debian packages from zfsonlinux.org repository.

[Carlos Alberto Lopez Perez]

On 26/08/16 09:50, Petter Reinholdtsen wrote:
> 
> I believe it is very good for us to have this discussion, while the zfs
> maintenance team is still young.  And for the record, I am discussing
> which policy and priorities we should have when deciding which patches
> to include in the Debian package.  I am not discussing individual
> patches to prepare for a vote for/against including them.
> 
>  * Everyone seem to agree that we should try to only apply "killer
>    feature" patches that are important for the users in Debian, or
>    patches related to Debian integration (like improving or correcting
>    init.d scripts and systemd configuration).  There is some
>    disagreement about what a "killer feature" is of course.
> 
>  * Everyone also seem to agree that we should be more reluctant to patch
>    the kernel part of zfs than the user space part.
> 
>  * And everyone seem to agree that we should try to push new features as
>    patches upstream first, and only include the patches in Debian if the
>    feature is a "killer feature" that is important to our users when
>    upstream fail to include it in a timely manner.  This will cause
>    extra work every time a new version of ZFS is released, so we should
>    not do this a lot to keep the package maintainable.
> 
> Could these three points form the core of our policy for including
> patches in the ZFS packages in Debian?  Are there other issues we should
> also consider?
> 
> Part of the disagreement seem to be about how feasable it is to get some
> of the ZoL patches included in the ZoL master code, and if the NFS, SMB
> iSCSI and other fixes are killer features or not.  I do not really have
> an opinion on this, as I have not studied the patches nor tried to use
> SMB and iSCSI with ZFS.  I have tested NFS exporting using /etc/exports,
> and this work as far as I can tell.  In general I agree that it would be
> nice if the zfs documentation regarding nfs exports should work in
> Debian, but I do not know if that is what the patch in question is doing
> or not.
> 

Coming to this topic back.


After checking the patches in more detail is true that they only touch
the libshare part of the code. Which is something that I understand
(correct me if i'm wrong) won't affect users not using the ZFS built-in
share features.

So in the end this boils down to:

 - Users that won't use the ZFS  built-in share features: They won't be
affected in any case if we merge this or not. Because they won't use it.

 - Users that will use the ZFS built-in share features: Its already
broken, so having this patches merged will do only good for them.


So, after reflecting on this. I'm ok with merging this patches (if Aron
also agrees). Specially if upstream (Brian?) accepts to merge them after
a test period on Debian (lets say after some months or 1 year?)

But I'm not committing to maintain them.
I hope Turbo is still willing to help with its maintenance.

Regards.

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