[illumos-Developer] Information request: Using Joerg's fixes and contributions with Illumos or with an Illumos-based distro

[Garrett D'Amore]

On Mon, 2010-12-06 at 01:01 +0530, Sriram Narayanan wrote:
> Hello:
> 
> I'm neither as technical as most Illumos developers, not as clued in
> on non-list conversations (if any).
> 
> Some of the members of the Belenix dev team have been using various
> Illumos builds for several weeks, and we're happy to take things ahead
> and base the next Belenix on a recommended Illumos build :) This is a
> separate topic for discussion, and we're going to work closely with
> the illumos-dev team on the recommended build.

Glad to hear it!

> 
> My intent of this email is to understand what the issues are with
> integrating Joerg's various contributions. I ask this for the
> following reasons:
> - I've seen some earlier technical discussions where Joerg's provided
> patches (or at least I felt that he has)
> - There has been some discussion on how these compare to other implementations
> - He has provided technical input (as it has seemed to me) on other
> people's implementations.

Remember that he's unlikely to approach the other implementations
"objectively".  It seems to me that he's got a singular mission in the
world, which is the widest possible acceptance of star.  Admittedly,
he's not the only one with such a mission, but it is something to
consider when you evaluate his statements.  (And I've seen similarly
"influenced" opinions from other people about their archiver
implementations and Joerg's.  It becomes challenging to reconcile
differing opinions when they are clearly in disagreement with one
another.)

> 
> After a sudden silence, I have then seen conclusions by Garrett that
> it's difficult to work with Joerg, and my understanding is that his
> work won't be accepted.

That's not precisely what I said.  What I said is that I've found him
difficult to work with, and that *I* won't be taking the job of
sponsoring his changes.  I did point him to other individuals he could
approach to do the work.  That was months ago, and the only response
I've seen so far from him is a public rant against illumos, Nexenta, and
me personally at an OSUG in Berlin.

Personally, I think integrating star into illumos would be a mistake at
this point, but I'm willing to let the work proceed if Joerg can
convince other people it is meritorious.  I'm just not willing to spend
another minute of my own time working on it.  Nobody else has stepped
forward.

I personally believe that "star" is one of those sorts of programs that
doesn't need to be in illumos-gate, but that distributions can
reasonably pick up for themselves.


> My questions:
> 1. Are there any technical reasons for rejecting Joerg's
> patches/contributions (e.g. process to follow,  the contributions
> would break compatibility) ?

Process to follow is one point.  Another point is the enormous amount of
code that comes with his work, that is irrelevant to illumos.
(libschily is "portability layer".  We don't need a portability layer
for a first class illumos-gate citizen.  And indeed, this is something
I'd like to "fix" about ksh93, as it has thousands of lines of code that
are not even compiled... but that's a separate rant.)

> 2. In case the fixes would be really useful, but we need to request
> Joerg to contribute these in a specific way (e.g. submission to a
> patch system, etc), could someone please point out the desired process
> ?

The process is to coordinate with an advocate.  The advocates other than
I are a present Gordon Ross and Rich Lowe.  I hope to see more
advocates, but the process to becoming an advocate is based on making
good integrations into illumos.  No other individuals have done a
sufficient number of integrations into illumos have come forward yet.

> 3. For the next Illumos-based Belenix, are there are recommended steps
> on using Joerg's tools what would both help Belenix be as closely
> aligned with Illumos as well as be able to provide Joerg's various
> tools (e.g. use of symlinks to Joerg's tools) ?

I'm not sure.  Joerg has had rather ... strenous ... disagreements with
the enhancements done for legacy Sun tar, and I'm not sure that all
archives are compatible between the tools.  Its like that there would
not be major problems, but I can't address this question more directly.

> 4. Should we discuss each of the above on separate email threads and
> should these be public/private email discussions ?

Actually, I'd *really* like it if we could just take any discussion of
archivers *elsewhere*.  As I've said elsewhere, all discussion
surrounding this topic has been very toxic, and is an open and festering
wound. 

	- Garrett