October OpenZFS Leadership Meeting

[Matthew Ahrens]

At this month's meeting we discussed: zpool ddtload; xattrs status; OpenZFS
repo; ZoF status; staging branch; release notes preview; early meeting time.

Video is available here:  https://youtu.be/hL31yMN6Eq0


Detailed notes (thanks Serapheim):

   -

   Dev Summit
   -

      Please register if you haven't already - almost at capacity
      -

      Recorded and live-stream (same service as last year)
      -

   zpool ddtload
   -

      A new subcommand proposed by Will Andrews
      -

      Use-case: Large DDT table - after reboot write-performance is bad
      because we have to read from the DDT
      -

      Proposed Solution: The new command will preload the DDT in the ARC
      on-demand
      -

      Current Status: Looking into plugging it in zpool wait so we know
      when it is finished and looking for reviewers. PR Link:
      https://github.com/zfsonlinux/zfs/pull/9464
      -

   xattrs update:
   -

      Update from Gordon Ross:
      -

         Still gathering information. Currently looking for contacts and
         survey of how things happen today, especially for Windows and
OSX (Jorgen
         Lundman is probably a good point of contact for that).
         -

         ACLs and DOS-style attribute bits are also an issue, but less
         critical. They are stored in a platform-agnostic way, but
some platforms
         don’t support them so this state is not visible on all
platforms. Just a
         heads up, we are still trying to document those.
         -

   Question: What is the status of OpenZFS repo - no sync with illumos a
   long time?
   -

      Currently planning to retire that repo - an email will be sent to let
      everyone know. The plan is to reinstate a repo with the same
name (OpenZFS)
      but based on ZoL (and ZoF soon)
      -

      There is no real-deadline or schedule for this. Probably going to
      have it finalized once ZoF is part of ZoL and we have CI setup
      -

      More info on this and the status of ZoF at the Dev Summit
      -

   Status of ZoF (ZFS on FreeBSD using ZoL codebase) (Post-meeting update):
   -

      Code is mostly written.
      -

      Working on upstreaming to ZoL.  Probably at least a few more months
      to finish that.
      -

      Testing
      -

         ZTS runs on ZoF prototype
         -

         Still need to hook up buildbot to FreeBSD
         -

         Would like to upgrade buildbot
         -

   Igork - Integration process idea:
   -

      Problem: The master branch has shown to have test regressions (or
      even panics) in the past. This is especially bad when you want
to introduce
      a change and your PR fails for unrelated issues.
      -

      Idea: Have a separate branch (like a staging branch) and collect
      weekly/bi-weekly changes on it and test it thoroughly before
merging it to
      'master' (or potentially use different tag). Ideally we'd want a branch
      with no sporadic failures.
      -

      People agree that this definitely has been an issue in the past, but
      the proposed solution may increase the maintenance/coordination/release
      burden of our release/branching process. Additionally, testing may be
      incomplete as people test against a clean build but not the final product
      where everything will be merged together. This could surface new bugs and
      merging issues.
      -

      Another way would be to look into ways that we can tackle the same
      problem by having different kinds of testing, reverting commits faster,
      etc..
      -

   Igork: It would be nice to see the drafts of the release notes of future
   versions. Helps people plan their upgrades accordingly for they things that
   matter to them.
   -

      We'd have to talk to the folks at Livermore who are currently
      organizing all the release logistics. Use of Milestones by Brian
in Github
      achieves part of that but it is not a full solution to the problem. In
      general it would be nice to communicate more about branching and our
      release cycle.
      -

      Matt will work with Brian and others on this starting from the next
      release (transparent and communicate better, so we don't have to
ping Brian
      personally)
      -

   Possibility to move the "early" meeting even earlier (request from
   Ubuntu ZFS people in the UK who have family commitments at our usual times)
   -

      Current pattern: 2 at a later time for folks in Asia and 2 at an
      earlier time for folks in Europe. Proposal: 9am (2 hrs earlier)
      -

      Most folks seem to agree that this is acceptable


On Mon, Oct 14, 2019 at 10:39 AM Matthew Ahrens <mahrens at delphix.com> wrote:

> It's only 3 weeks until the OpenZFS Developer Summit.  Time to register if
> you have not already!
> http://open-zfs.org/wiki/OpenZFS_Developer_Summit_2019
>
> The next OpenZFS Leadership meeting will be held tomorrow, October 15th,
> 11am-noon Pacific time.
>
> Everyone is welcome to attend and participate, and we will try to keep the
> meeting on agenda and on time.  The meetings will be held online via Zoom,
> and recorded and posted to the website and YouTube after the meeting.
>
> The agenda for the meeting will be a discussion of the projects listed in
> the agenda doc.
>
> For more information and details on how to attend, as well as notes and
> video from the previous meeting, please see the agenda document:
>
>
> https://docs.google.com/document/d/1w2jv2XVYFmBVvG1EGf-9A5HBVsjAYoLIFZAnWHhV-BM/edit
>
> --matt
>