Re: release plan for mdadm

["Radtke, Jakub" <jakub.radtke@linux.intel.com>]

Hi Jes,
     I have also resent the patches related to the bitmap support in 
IMSM posted some time ago.
Regards, Jakub

> On 02.03.2021 23:50, Jes Sorensen wrote:
>> On 1/27/21 6:39 AM, Tkaczyk, Mariusz wrote:
>>> Hi Jes,
>>>
>>> It's been a while since last mdadm release. Mdadm-4.2 release that was
>>> mentioned back in July does not happened yet. It's getting messy to
>>> manage mdadm across multiple distributions.
>>>
>>> Also, not all OSVs are willing to cherry-pick the patches, especially
>>> for stable project - like mdadm, so only critical bugfixes are landing
>>> in the distros.
>>> As a result - new OSes has various forks of mdadm-4.1 and the 
>>> difference
>>> is growing with every backported patch. It leads us to situation where
>>> those forks may have own bugs, caused by many missing bugfixes or 
>>> wrongly
>>> resolved merge conflicts.
>>> To be honest - it becomes more and more problematic for us to track all
>>> fixes in different supported distros.
>>>
>>> We are searching for solutions for those problems and we are 
>>> counting on
>>> your support:
>>> Short term - is there any way that we can help you to release next 
>>> version
>>> of mdadm soon?
>>>
>>> Long term - what do you think about smaller, more frequent releases of
>>> mdadm? Maybe twice a year is an option (similar to RedHat/Ubuntu
>>> schedule)? That would be better for us and for vendors. They will need
>>> to follow upstream instead resolving bugs reported by us or community.
>>>
>>> The benefits will be gained by everyone. User will get up-to-date
>>> software much faster, with minimal vendor input and modifications.
>>> Mdadm bugs will be predictable across distros. We could help with
>>> testing IMSM and basic functionality of native metadata.
>>
>> Hi Mariusz,
>>
>> Sorry for the slow response. Our daughter was born in late December and
>> I was on paternity leave through Feb 5, so still catching up. I also
>> switched teams at work back in July so my focus was shifted.
> Hi Jes,
> Congratulations:)
>>
>> I'd very much like to see a release, and we should do one quick. Doing
>> more regular releases will also make it easier to ship them, so I am not
>> against that at all.
>>
>> I am not aware of anything major pending right now, so if we can get
>> focus on any pending patches and get them in over the next week or two,
>> then I can cut an -rc and we can do a release soon. Especially if you
>> can help out regression testing the -rc candidate(s).
>>
>> Cheers,
>> Jes
>>
> Thanks for answer. Please review all patches in queue, and mark -rc.
> Then I will schedule regression.
>
> Mariusz