[ovirt-devel] Debian porting

[Milan Zamazal]

lucas castro <lucascastroborges at gmail.com> writes:

> Who is working on ovirt debian porting,

I'm working on inclusion of Vdsm into Debian.  ovirt-guest-agent is
already included in Debian (packaged by another Debian maintainer).  I'm
not aware about any plans to package Engine for Debian nor I plan to do
so.

There are also Vdsm Debian packages provided by oVirt at
http://resources.ovirt.org/pub/ovirt-3.6/debian/, but I don't recommend
using them if you are going to use packages from standard Debian
distribution once they are ready.  While the packages to be included in
Debian started from those provided by oVirt, there are many fixes in
them and upgrading from oVirt repository packages to packages from
Debian is not supported (may change if there is strong demand for that).
So mixing those is likely to cause troubles.

As for Vdsm in Debian, I've already uploaded most of the supporting
packages (Python libraries, MoM) to Debian unstable.  Vdsm itself is in
preparation.

One blocker is old version of sanlock package in Debian and missing
sanlock-python package.  I wrote to the Debian package maintainer a few
days ago, no response so far.  In the meantime, it's possible to use
sanlock packages by oVirt from the URL mentioned above.  (Please note I
can't simply upload Debian package of another maintainer without his
consent, so we must be patient.)

> And how can I help ? 

If you'd like to help with Vdsm packaging in Debian, you can do so in
any of the following ways:

- Providing input on your needs.

- Providing feedback on what to do with /rhev/data-center mounts
  directory in Vdsm.  It's FHS incompatible and must be changed for
  Debian (the current location in the package is
  /run/vdsm/rhev/data-center).  The unpleasant thing is that AFAIK
  migrations are not possible with current Vdsm across machines with
  mounts at different locations, so we should be careful.

- Testing vdsm* packages once they are ready.  They're not yet but once
  they are, testing them will be very welcome.

- Providing feedback on the packaging.  The git repository is on Alioth:
  https://anonscm.debian.org/cgit/collab-maint/vdsm.git/ .  BTW, if
  anybody needs commit access (and doesn't have it) to the repository,
  tell me.  Just please coordinate with me in any case so that we avoid
  duplicate work or conflicting plans.

- The `vdsm*' packages are currently lintian clean, but completely
  untested, even installation may not work.  If you'd like to check the
  installation and to fix contingent bugs preventing it, it's welcome.
  You'll also need safelease
  (https://anonscm.debian.org/cgit/collab-maint/safelease.git/), not yet
  in Debian but ready to upload, I'll do so soon.

- Testing whether all the Vdsm related packages from unstable
  (python-cpopen, python-threading, ioprocess, safelease, mom, vdsm*)
  work on Debian 8 (jessie) as well.  Ideally, they might work
  unchanged, but in case they don't we may be considering backporting
  them.

- You can also review patches in debian/patches.  Maybe some of the
  changes should be incorporated upstream, maybe some of them should be
  improved.