What is blocking a Samba4 Tech Preview?

[Steve Langasek]

On Tue, Dec 20, 2005 at 08:01:23AM -0800, Jeremy Allison wrote:
> On Tue, Dec 20, 2005 at 12:55:00AM -0800, Steve Langasek wrote:
> > On Mon, Dec 19, 2005 at 03:42:04PM +0100, Steinar H. Gunderson wrote:
> > > On Mon, Dec 19, 2005 at 03:52:02AM -0800, Steve Langasek wrote:
> > > >> There currently is an upgrade script that reads in a Samba3 smb.conf
> > > >> file and the various Samba3 TDB files and writes out the appropriate
> > > >> Samba4 data files. I guess you'd be using these in upgrades. 
> > > > Ok.  Does the current packaging use this? :-)

> > > No, currently it doesn't. I'm a bit unsure if we really want to make the
> > > samba4 packages direct upgrades from samba, though (ie. calling them just
> > > "samba" with a version number of 3.9.something), given that a downgrade would
> > > be downright impossible... This is definitely your call, though; we could
> > > probably adjust the packaging to match names more properly (giving direct
> > > upgrades) if there's a desire for it.

> > Does having them installed under a different package name make it easier for
> > the user to downgrade?  Isn't the best-case downgrade process in both cases
> > going to be "uninstall the samba4 version of the package, manually massage
> > your config back into a usable state (or restore from backup), and install
> > the samba3 version"?  If so, I see no reason to not begin supporting direct
> > upgrades (and debugging them).

> As we have something of a code fork in development, it's probably a good
> idea to keep the Samba4 prefix to make sure that this isn't seen as a
> seamless upgrade. I don't think it will be.

I appreciate that this is the situation today, but I don't foresee shipping
both samba3 and samba4 together in a stable Debian release.  If the eventual
target is that samba4 will be a direct replacement for samba3, then I
consider it our responsibility as Debian package maintainers to make it a
direct, automatic, and seamless replacement by the point we're ready to
include it in a stable release.  With this goal in mind, it makes sense to
me that we would want to start working out the bugs in this upgrade path
sooner rather than later.

Cheers,
-- 
Steve Langasek                   Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS
Debian Developer                   to set it on, and I can move the world.
vorlon at debian.org                                   http://www.debian.org/
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 189 bytes
Desc: Digital signature
Url : http://lists.samba.org/archive/samba-technical/attachments/20051221/e36b32d7/attachment.bin