[linux-cifs-client] should we separate out the cifs utilities from the samba tree?

[Shirish Pargaonkar]

On Tue, Jan 26, 2010 at 10:05 AM, Jeff Layton <jlayton at samba.org> wrote:
> Lately we've had a number of "security" fire drills that have required
> us to patch all of the previous samba branches. This is a major pain...
>
> Right now, the cifs utilities in samba (mount.cifs and cifs.upcall) are
> only really there as a matter of convenience. They're not really part
> of samba in any material way, and really ought to be something we
> package separately.
>
> Decoupling the cifs utils from samba would be easier for distro
> packagers too. No need to do an entire samba release if there's a
> mount.cifs problem and vice versa...
>
> I'd like to start splitting those tools out into a separate cifs-utils
> git tree and tarball. I'll probably still host those at samba.org for
> the forseeable future.
>
> The main stumbling block at this point is the fact that cifs.upcall
> links in some libsmbclient objects during the build. Before we can
> separate them we'll have to make cifs.upcall not do that. I may need
> some help and guidance from people better versed in krb5 programming.
>
> Anyone have thoughts or objections to this plan?
>
> --
> Jeff Layton <jlayton at samba.org>
>

I think it is a good idea.  Although after security audit, mount.cifs may
not churn much (there are not any unresolved mount.cifs bugzillas around afaik)
but I suspect cifs.upcall would. I myself want to/plan to add an upcall or two.
It would be similar to nfs utils also.

Regards,

Shirish