[dm-devel] multipath-tools: Debian patches

[Martin Wilck]

On Mon, 2023-06-05 at 21:59 +0200, Xose Vazquez Perez wrote:
> Hi,
> 

I have no Debian salsa account, so I reply here, trying to reach Chris
via email.

> 
> A complaint about upstream, "Remove library development files and all
> of libdmmp":
> https://salsa.debian.org/linux-blocks-team/multipath-tools/-/commit/8c46661697d757763192d8e011c9ad53358d20b7

If Chris has followed the upstream discussion, he is probably aware
that we do care about the ABI. We don't keep the libmultipath ABI
stable, but track it using ABI versioning. It is true that most of the
libmultipath headers are not used for other projects. Not installing
any headers except the public ones makes sense, actually.

The libmpathpersist API (LIBMPATHPERSIST_2.1.0) that's used by qemu is
supposed to remain stable. We have moved those parts of the ABI that
used to be more volatile into __LIBMPATHPERSIST_INT_1.0.0.

Therefore it makes sense to keep shipping mpath_persist.h and drop the
rest. If that works for Debian, it will probably work for other
distros, too.

libdmpp comes from Red Hat, perhaps Ben knows whether it is still used
by any alive project. It does have a stable API/ABI.

> And maybe these are relevant for upstream ( repo:
> https://salsa.debian.org/linux-blocks-team/multipath-tools/-/tree/master/debian/patches
>  ):
> 
> https://udd.debian.org/patches.cgi?src=multipath-tools&version=0.9.4-3
> 

That's not how we work. We don't pick downstream patches. If
something's wrong with the upstream code, we'll happily discuss patches
from the Debian project, preferably here on dm-devel.

Regards
Martin