status of forked zlibs in rsync and zsync

Toshio Kuratomi a.badger at gmail.com
Thu Oct 1 16:17:30 UTC 2009


On 10/01/2009 03:10 AM, Josephine Tannhäuser wrote:
> 2009/9/14 Adam Williamson <awilliam at redhat.com>
> 
>> Hi, everyone. We - the QA group - have recently been researching the
>> feasibility of using zsync to reduce the size of live image downloads.
>> This has hit a roadblock in the form of the problem where both rsync and
>> zsync use forked zlibs rather than linking against the system copy.
>>
> 
> Imho, allow zsync for fedora. If you can solve the zlib-problem of rsync,
> the problem of zsync will be solved as well, cause the integrity of zsync in
> fedora fails on rsync-compatibility, which needs a forked zlib.
> 
If you want it in, do the work.  I've outlined the possibilities several
times:

A) You're a coder and want to get your hands dirty with the rsync
protocol.  Check out how librsync manages to use the system zlib and if
possible to do this compatibly, apply it to zsync and rsync, possible as
a build time option.  Push the changes upstream if possible.  If it's
impossible to apply the librsync strategy, having a good explanation of
what librsync is doing and why it can't work for rsync/zsync would be
great for crossing this option off the list.

B) You're a sometime coder and good with talking to other people.  Try
to convince zlib to take the patches from rsync (and the zlib-rsyncable
patches while you're at it).  zlib has a mailing list that's open to
developers and testers of zlib.  AFAICS from looking at subjects in the
entire archive, neither of these patches have gone to that mailing list.
 Since the mailing list archives aren't wide open, I'm thinking that the
patches went directly to one of the developers mailboxes where it was
ignored or forgotten.  Getting them to the mailing list would be a good
first start.  http://zlib.net/mailman/listinfo/zlib-devel_madler.net

C) You're a coder and want to be responsible for maintaining a new, more
forward moving zlib.  Pull the zlib code out of rsync, start a new
upstream for it, package it for Fedora.  You can also pull other
requested features in (like the zlib-rsyncable patches that were in the
zlib I just pulled out of deltarpm).  Get someone to announce to other
distributions that this library exists.

D) You're good with build scripts like autoconf and configure and good
with talking to other people.  Work on the rsync build so that it builds
and installs the bundled zlib as a shared library with a new name.  Push
the changes to the rsync upstream so they maintain the fork.

Asking for an exception when: 1) I just spent all of yesterday dealing
with a security flaw due to a bundled zlib and 2) a request for an
exception has already been turned down is beating on a dead horse with a
wet noodle.

-Toshio

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