The Samba4 How To in the wiki, and Samba naming

[Scott Lovenberg]

On Mon, Dec 31, 2012 at 4:05 PM, Andrew Bartlett <abartlet at samba.org> wrote:
>> FWIW, I agree with staying away from the '4.0' thing now that the
>> release has happened; it's a full suite with many versions of
>> different projects and packages and the suite is an "AD DC" regardless
>> of whether you're using the Samba-3 file server with the Samba-4 AD
>> DC, etc.
>
> I think this actually muddies the waters even more.  We have released a
> single *version* of the suite, which multiple components (some of which
> have come from different development strands, but all of which are Samba
> 4.0).
>
> The general concept of the AD DC certainly should be described as just
> the 'Samba AD DC'.
>
> We can and should talk about version 4.0 (but keeping in mind that we
> will have 4.1 in the future).  But we shouldn't use version numbers to
> describe this history of the components, we should use versions only to
> say the actual version of the component.
>
> That is:  We would all recognise it as correct to say we have a Samba
> 3.6 domain member running smbd and winbindd joined to a Samba 4.0 AD DC
> with 'net ads join'.
>
> The reason I'm encouraging this is that when Samba 4.0 enters
> distributions and folks are running Samba 4.1 on their DC, we don't want
> to say: we have a Samba3 domain member (actually version 4.0) joined to
> a Samba4 DC (actually version 4.1). It is a shorthand that will only get
> us into trouble, even if it is one we have used for too long.
>
> (This is also why the 'domain member' code in the 'samba' binary
> actually refuses to start, unless apparently hosting openchange or an
> ntvfs proxy, so that the term Samba 4.0 domain member is as unambiguous
> as possible in terms of describing the code being used.  I even went to
> the extent of making joining a domain with 'samba-tool domain join'
> correctly set up the secrets.tdb).
>
> The other reason, beyond simple confusion is that while the split in our
> development will not be lost in the history of the codebase or the minds
> of those involved any time soon, we should do what we can to
> under-emphasise it.  We have a common build system for all of Samba, and
> we continue to see more and more components shared.  We are working to
> deal with the rest, and components that once only worked in some
> configurations are slowly being reworked to be more broadly applicable.
> (For example, did you know pdbedit works against the AD DC?)
>
> I hope I've not confused you further.
>
> Andrew Bartlett

That all sounds very reasonable and I completely agree.


-- 
Peace and Blessings,
-Scott.