My proposed path to a Beta for Samba 4.0

[steve]

On 05/11/2012 09:56 AM, Andrew Bartlett wrote:
> As I have mentioned before, we are very close to making a beta release
> of Samba 4.0.
>
> We haven't done betas of Samba for quite some time (the 3.x series
> hasn't used alpha or beta releases since 3.0), so I should be clear what
> I mean by a beta, as I seek concurrence or comment.
>
> My proposal is that the release of Samba 4.0 beta 1 will be much like
> the alpha and TP series before it, but the transition marks the maturity
> of the long-awaited integration of the smbd file server, currently being
> developed under the s3fs project.
>
> Before we can make a beta 1 release, we need to merge the patches I
> proposed and make the use of s3fs the default mode of operation for a
> new provision.  To avoid disruption to existing production users, I
> propose that this be done by writing entries in the smb.conf at
> provision time, rather than changing the defaults inside Samba.
>
> Once these two steps are made, I think we should make a release.  I do
> not propose to wait on any other features/patches/bugs, but to instead
> focus on making a beta2 as soon any any other significant changes are
> ready.
>
> Finally, once we are happy with the state of the master tree, we can
> proceed to Karolin managing pre or release candidate releases, and at
> the RC stage we should fork the tree for the final release.
>
> I would appreciate any comments that any of you have about this plan,
> because I like many of you are exited to be getting to Samba 4.0, and
> want to ensure we do it in the best way we can.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Andrew Bartlett
Hi
Before the beta, could we please make sure that s3fs can handle acl, 
ownership and group mapping Linux to Windows? i.e. what I set on ext4 on 
the Linux s3fs file server means the same thing to both Linux and 
windows clients? At the moment it doesn't.

If we want the distros to take s4 on board then we must make sure that 
real end user issues are sorted.

In true 
"If-what's-already-there-is-not-quite-what-we-had-in-mind-so-we'll-code-it-ourselves" 
Samba Spirit then we owe the distros at least a firm and understandable 
base upon which to make their rpms, dpkg's, yum's or whatever.

Whilst samba-technical members may have the knowledge and understanding 
to solve what to them seem trivial problems, the production user is 
unlikely to be blessed with the same.  For example, there is another 
thread here for group read-write to a share. It doesn't work. I feel 
that these small issues should be solved before Samba 4.0 beta.

This is really (but really) close now. s3fs was the last piece in our 
puzzle. If we can get group acl mapping we'd say a big beta yes. 
Immediately.

Cheers,
Steve