Re: 64-bit time_t transition question, and Re: Backport request for btrfs-progs
Hi,
On Fri, 2024-06-21 at 16:14 -0400, Nicholas D Steeves wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Apologies for CCing everyone involved, but I haven't been able to find
> anything about how the 64-bit time_t transition affects backports.
>
> Alessandro Polverini <alex@polverini.org> writes:
>
> > Hello,
> > we have a backported kernel 6.8 (btw, thanks!), but we miss a
> > corresponding btrfs-progs, is it possible to have a backport?
> > Right now there is only v. 6.0.x
> >
> > Thanks in any case!
> > Alex
>
> Thank you for the request, and yes, I'd be happy to resume backporting
> btrfs-progs. Please note, however, that Debian sid/unstable has not yet
> had newer than 6.6.3 imported, so if you'd like 6.8 than you'll need to
> 'reportbug btrfs-progs' and request an up-to-date release for
> sid/unstable. I would backport 6.6.3 while waiting for this.
>
> One thing I'm not sure about is how the 64-bit time_t transition affects
> backports: A no-change backport of btrfs-progs would normally require a
> no-change backport of reiserfsprogs, but I feel like reiserfsprogs'
> 64-bit time_t transition could break things for bookworm users. The
> three options appear to be:
>
> 1. No-change backports everywhere (and risk breakage).
> 2. Disable support for reiserfs in btrfs-convert (my preference).
> 3. Backport reiserfsprogs without the 64-bit time_t transition.
>
> I don't yet trust or recommend the use of btrfs-convert, but "ReiserFS
> has been deprecated upstream and scheduled for removal 2025"
> (reiserfsprogs/debian/changelog), so I can understand why people might
> want support for this to migrate in-place now... That said, backup and
> restore to a filesystem created with mkfs (rather than btrfs-convert) is
> the safest route, and I'd prefer if users used trixie to experiment with
> in-place conversion.
tl;dr: Backport with the 64-bit time_t transition changes reverted
Long answer: In case you backport a package, it will build with the old
dpkg/debhelper and therefore will not enable 64-bit time_t. So in case
your backport would include the 64-bit time_t changes, these changes
would be wrong.
--
Benjamin Drung
Debian & Ubuntu Developer
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