[Pkg-zfsonlinux-devel] ZFS on Linux and native ZFS on BSD

[Aron Xu]

Dear fellow developers,

It has been quite some time since native ZFS on Linux (zfsonlinux, or
ZoL) enters release candidate testing phrase, and a team has been
founded recently for the work in Debian (pkg-zfsonlinux). Here we have
several issues to be confirmed and coordinated between kBSD and ZoL,
so that we can work for the desirable direction.

1. Naming of the packages
In kFreeBSD, src:zfsutils produces libnvpair1{,-udeb},
libumem1{,-udeb}, libuutil1{,-udeb}, libzfs1{,-udeb},
libzpool1{,-udeb}, and zfsutils{,-udeb}. I'm curious if we can reuse
the names of these binary packages on linux-any architectures, and
choose a different source package name (zfs-linux, currently)?

2. Partman support
As far as I know, partman-zfs is GPL licensed, and does not need to
link against any CDDL stuff, so I think it would be OK to integrate
ZoL support if there are people do the work?

3. Compatibility (zpool, etc)
In ZoL RC14, zpool version has been bumped to 5000, following the step
of OpenIndiana. I'm curious what's the current zpool version in
kFreeBSD, and what's your plan? It would be great if people can import
existing ZoL partition to a kFreeBSD installation, or reversely.

There is also a question about /etc/hostid handling, do you know how
is it handled in kBSD? Existing packaging work of Fedora ZoL makes
hostid static, but I doubt it's desired.

4. About zfs-fuse on Linux
Debian package maintainer of zfs-fuse has joined the team of ZoL, and
he said we may remove zfs-fuse from the archive when ZoL is available
in unstable, so zfs-fuse won't get in the way of naming and
compatibility then.

5. Licensing
ZoL is an independent Linux kernel module developed by Lawrence
Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) under a contract between U.S.
Department of Energy and LLNL, and is separated into two parts to
avoid violating CDDL. A Solaris Porting Layer (SPL) kernel module is
developed to provide many of the Solaris kernel APIs, and is licensed
under GPL-2+, while the zfs modules are CDDL, reusing existing
OpenSolaris code and cooperate with BSDs and OpenIndiana.


--
Regards,
Aron Xu