Libguestfs - Jul 2018 - Re: [nbdkit] Plan for nbdkit 1.4?

I'd like to suggest that we release nbdkit 1.4 (next stable branch) soon.

The last stable branch was effectively released in January this year
(although I didn't actually implement the stable/development branch
policy until April).

There has been a lot of development since then:

 - Switch to defaulting to newstyle protocol.
 - On-demand ramping of thread pool.
 - TRIM support in the file plugin.
 - nbdkit_parse_size rewritten.
 - Test IPv6 connections.
 - Reworked error handling.
 - New log filter.
 - New blocksize filter.
 - New nozero filter.
 - New fua filter.
 - New can_zero, can_fua methods and better handling of FUA.
 - New nbdkit_realpath function.
 - Better handling of shutdown.
 - New ext2 plugin.
 - Bash tab completion.
 - New zero plugin.
 - New random plugin.
 - New PKG_CHECK_VAR variables.
 - TLS-PSK authentication.
 - New Tcl plugin (posted for review).
 - Of course numerous smaller bug fixes and improvements.

I'm also going to propose that we try to get 1.4 into RHEL 8, which
means we will need to do this branching fairly quickly, in the next
few weeks.

Let me know what you think.

Thanks,

Rich.

-- 
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Read my programming and virtualization blog: http://rwmj.wordpress.com
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On 07/01/2018 11:05 AM, Richard W.M. Jones wrote:
> I'd like to suggest that we release nbdkit 1.4 (next stable branch)
soon.
> 
> The last stable branch was effectively released in January this year
> (although I didn't actually implement the stable/development branch
> policy until April).
> 
> There has been a lot of development since then:
> 
>   - Switch to defaulting to newstyle protocol.
>   - On-demand ramping of thread pool.
>   - TRIM support in the file plugin.
>   - nbdkit_parse_size rewritten.
>   - Test IPv6 connections.
>   - Reworked error handling.
>   - New log filter.
>   - New blocksize filter.
>   - New nozero filter.
>   - New fua filter.
>   - New can_zero, can_fua methods and better handling of FUA.
I proposed python plugin implementations of these, but never got around 
to testing that they worked in both python 2/3, and never extended my 
proposal to cover other languages like perl, so the python patches 
remain uncommitted.  That should not be the basis for avoiding a stable 
release, though.
>   - New nbdkit_realpath function.
>   - Better handling of shutdown.
>   - New ext2 plugin.
>   - Bash tab completion.
>   - New zero plugin.
>   - New random plugin.
>   - New PKG_CHECK_VAR variables.
>   - TLS-PSK authentication.
>   - New Tcl plugin (posted for review).
>   - Of course numerous smaller bug fixes and improvements.
> 
> I'm also going to propose that we try to get 1.4 into RHEL 8, which
> means we will need to do this branching fairly quickly, in the next
> few weeks.
> 
> Let me know what you think.
I'm out the next couple of weeks, which means I won't be able to help 
with any final patches/branching/backporting until after July 20, but 
again, don't let my schedule be the driving factor.


-- 
Eric Blake, Principal Software Engineer
Red Hat, Inc.           +1-919-301-3266
Virtualization:  qemu.org | libvirt.org

On Thu, Jul 05, 2018 at 01:12:14PM -0500, Eric Blake
wrote:
> On 07/01/2018 11:05 AM, Richard W.M. Jones wrote:
> >I'd like to suggest that we release nbdkit 1.4 (next stable branch)
soon.
> >
> >The last stable branch was effectively released in January this year
> >(although I didn't actually implement the stable/development branch
> >policy until April).
> >
> >There has been a lot of development since then:
> >
> >  - Switch to defaulting to newstyle protocol.
> >  - On-demand ramping of thread pool.
> >  - TRIM support in the file plugin.
> >  - nbdkit_parse_size rewritten.
> >  - Test IPv6 connections.
> >  - Reworked error handling.
> >  - New log filter.
> >  - New blocksize filter.
> >  - New nozero filter.
> >  - New fua filter.
> >  - New can_zero, can_fua methods and better handling of FUA.
> 
> I proposed python plugin implementations of these, but never got
> around to testing that they worked in both python 2/3,
One thing I was thinking to do after the 1.4 split was to duplicate
the plugins/python directory into
{ plugins/python2 , plugins/python } (where the latter would be
Python 3 / current Python only).

It would let us remove awkward conditional code and make it much
easier to parallel build python2 & python3 plugins.

Rich.
> and never
> extended my proposal to cover other languages like perl, so the
> python patches remain uncommitted.  That should not be the basis for
> avoiding a stable release, though.
>
> >  - New nbdkit_realpath function.
> >  - Better handling of shutdown.
> >  - New ext2 plugin.
> >  - Bash tab completion.
> >  - New zero plugin.
> >  - New random plugin.
> >  - New PKG_CHECK_VAR variables.
> >  - TLS-PSK authentication.
> >  - New Tcl plugin (posted for review).
> >  - Of course numerous smaller bug fixes and improvements.
> >
> >I'm also going to propose that we try to get 1.4 into RHEL 8, which
> >means we will need to do this branching fairly quickly, in the next
> >few weeks.
> >
> >Let me know what you think.
> 
> I'm out the next couple of weeks, which means I won't be able to
> help with any final patches/branching/backporting until after July
> 20, but again, don't let my schedule be the driving factor.
> 
> 
> -- 
> Eric Blake, Principal Software Engineer
> Red Hat, Inc.           +1-919-301-3266
> Virtualization:  qemu.org | libvirt.org
-- 
Richard Jones, Virtualization Group, Red Hat http://people.redhat.com/~rjones
Read my programming and virtualization blog: http://rwmj.wordpress.com
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