Pre-approval request for dpkg sync() changes for squeeze

[Guillem Jover <guillem@debian.org>]

Hi!

I'd like to apply two patches for the next dpkg 1.15.8.6 upload. And
would like to run them through you to avoid having to possibly revert
them from dpkg's sid git branch.

Those are related to the fsync()/sync() changes in dpkg from some time
ago, the patches would:

  1) Switch back from sync() to fsync() before rename() (while keeping
     the sync() code around for the benefit of other distributions
     that might not want to switch just yet). So to avoid unrelated
     I/O when there's background work being done for example. This
     hack also only works on Linux where sync() is synchronous, so
     it would unify that code path for all dpkg supported platforms.

     Bug: #588339

  <http://git.hadrons.org/?p=debian/dpkg/dpkg.git;a=commitdiff;h=87740373>

  2) Add a new --force-unsafe-io to disable those fsync() for people
     using certain file systems where the only option is to choose
     between reliability or acceptable performance. Or in cases where
     the data is cached and it might not be important to lose it.

     Bug: #584254

  <http://git.hadrons.org/?p=debian/dpkg/dpkg.git;a=commitdiff;h=0484cd7d>

I'm planning to apply those for the 1.16.x branch anyway, and I think
would be important to have the same behaviour on the version that will
go into stable, more so if those problematic file systems are to
become more widely used.

I'll also be sending a summary of what's to come to debian-devel once
those patches land on any of the dpkg git branches.

thanks,
guillem