[Gluster-devel] Performance Translators' Stability and Usefulness

[Geoff Kassel]

Hi Gordan,

> >> Why wasn't this prioritised after such a disasterous bug?
> >
> > It could've been for any number of reasons ranging from problems with
> > reproducing it, limited functionality for managing bug reports in
> > Savannah to even the general constraints of being a commercial
> > open-source project.
> >
> > Still, I understand your problems are more important to you than the
> > problems being faced by other users, I'd so appreciate if you'd give our
> > bugzilla-based setup a chance at handling this bug. Or, let me
> > know if you've already filed a report.
>
> I'm not sure what Geoff's opinion on this is, but I don't think the
> issue has been in the bug reporting mechanism. It looks more like
> stability just wasn't deemed an important requirement until quite recently.

I quite agree with you, Gordan. I've answered this original point of Shehjar's 
elsewhere, so I won't repeat my angry rant again.

Geoff.

On Mon, 6 Jul 2009, Gordan Bobic wrote:
> Shehjar Tikoo wrote:
> >>>> Finally - which translators are deemed stable (no know issues -
> >>>> memory leaks/bloat, crashes, corruption, etc.)?
> >>>
> >>> We can definitely vouch for a higher degree of stability of the
> >>> releases. Otherwise, I dont think there is any performance translator
> >>> we can call completely stable/mature because of the roadmap we have
> >>> for constantly upgrading algorithms, functionality,
> >>>  etc.
> >>
> >> When will the Gluster team be able to deliver a stable, mature, and
> >> reliable version of GlusterFS?
> >
> > Continuing from what I said earlier, the fact that GlusterFS releases
> > work in a stable manner is shown by the deployments among our
> > customers.
> >
> > At the same time, are we satisfied with the experience of non-paying
> > users?
> > No. I accept there are bottlenecks in our processes. We
> > acknowledge that and have been working on fixing them.
>
> I'm glad the issue of paying vs. non-paying customers has been brought
> up. I have mentioned to some of the development team that I am not
> averse to the idea of becoming a paying customer, but the enthusiasm for
> encouraging this just didn't seem to be there. The two things I would
> potentially be interested in are:
>
> 1) Specific bug-fix sponsorship
> 2) Feature sponsorship
>
>  From what I can tell, however, the developers' operating model isn't
> geared up toward that.
>
> >> When will regression tests be used? It's been months now since this
> >> bug, and still I don't see any sign of the use of this simple,
> >> industry-standard technique to minimise the risk of such issues
> >> slipping through again.
> >
> > I think the QA folks have done some really good work in stabilizing
> > GlusterFS over the last year or so. The result is there to see in the
> > 2.0.X releases.
>
> I have to say that up until 2.0.2, which works reasonably well, the path
> from late 1.4.x that became 2.0.0qa1 up to and including 2.0.1 has been
> more than a little dicey. That's a long time to stabilize a release.
>
> I think there needs to be a split between stable (bug fixes _ONLY_!) and
> development releases (new/experimental features, redesign of parts of
> the system such as format of xattr metadata, etc.). And the priority
> should be given to stable release bug fixes under almost all
> circumstances. That way those that want new features can decide for
> themselves if the stability trade-off is worth it, and those of us who
> are happy with a smaller feature set but require very high stability
> don't have to suffer the instability caused by new and experimental
> features. What seems to have happened since the 1.3/1.4 split, is that
> support of the stable releases has been effectively dropped in favour of
> pouring all development effort into 1.4->2.0 releases. This left the
> users whose first priority is stability in a position where they cannot
> seriously consider using the software in a production environment.
>
> >> Why wasn't this prioritised after such a disasterous bug?
> >
> > It could've been for any number of reasons ranging from problems with
> > reproducing it, limited functionality for managing bug reports in
> > Savannah to even the general constraints of being a commercial
> > open-source project.
> >
> > Still, I understand your problems are more important to you than the
> > problems being faced by other users, I'd so appreciate if you'd give our
> > bugzilla-based setup a chance at handling this bug. Or, let me
> > know if you've already filed a report.
>
> I'm not sure what Geoff's opinion on this is, but I don't think the
> issue has been in the bug reporting mechanism. It looks more like
> stability just wasn't deemed an important requirement until quite recently.
>
> Gordan
>
>
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