Re: Co-maintaining Request For rdiff-backup-fs

Hi Syed,

sorry for the long time to answer, my holiday season was a bit crazy 
(long travel, Smartphone broken...). Have a happy new year, y'all, BTW.

First, let me state that we'd be happy to have you as co-maintainer for 
rdiff-backup-fs, which is indeed currently unmaintained, to the 
difference of rdiff-backup.

At the same time, the XZ case [1] has shown us that we need to be 
careful, so don't take it personally (I don't know you, so it can't be 
personal) but I'd like to make sure you're "real".

I've checked OSS Revival and will check your Pull Requests, but it would 
be great if you could show some prior art and "sign of life". It's a 
thin line, I also don't want to go into your personal life, but I owe it 
to our users to be cautious. Feel free to contact me offline if you 
don't want to go public with whichever information you provide.

KR, Eric

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XZ_Utils_backdoor

On 06/01/2026 08:23, Syed Shahrukh wrote:
> Dear Patrik,
> 
> Wishing you a happy new year!
> 
> I didn't hear from you, so I thought to touch base with you.
> 
>  From your last email, I sensed that you have plans for rdiff-backup.
> 
> Please share, so I can align with them within my available bandwidth.
> 
> I am still interested in co-maintaining rdiff-backup-fs,  so the package
> has:
> 1. Releases or tags.
> 2 Fixes available on the debian side.
> 3.New feature development.
> 
> Looking forward to hearing from you.
> 
> Kind regards,
> Syed Shahrukh Hussain.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> On Wed, Dec 17, 2025 at 4:34 PM Patrik Dufresne <[email protected]>
> wrote:
> 
>> Hello Syed,
>>
>> Thank you for reaching out, and you are certainly welcome to take over
>> work on the project. rdiff-backup-fs was originally salvaged by Eric as
>> part of an effort to centralize everything related to rdiff-backup, but it
>> hasn’t received much attention since then.
>>
>> Before moving forward, I would appreciate a bit more background so we can
>> better understand your plans.
>>
>>     - What level of involvement are you expecting to have in the project?
>>     - Will you be focusing only on maintaining the Debian packaging, or do
>>     you intend to work on the codebase upstream as well?
>>     - Do you also plan to contribute to rdiff-backup itself? Any help
>>     there would be greatly appreciated.
>>
>> For context, I’m also developing Rdiffweb and Minarca Data Backup, both of
>> which rely heavily on rdiff-backup. However, I haven’t had as much time
>> recently to contribute to the core project as I would like, which is why
>> additional maintainers would be very welcome.
>>
>> Looking forward to hearing more about your intentions and how you envision
>> your role.
>>
>> Could you also share with us some other work you have done ?
>>
>> Best regards,
>> On 12/16/25 09:59, Syed Shahrukh wrote:
>>
>> Hi,
>>
>> I am a Debian contributor trying to salvage rdiff-backup-fs on Debian
>>
>> I am reaching for co-maintenance of rdiff-backup-fs upstream for long term
>> maintenance.
>> https://github.com/rdiff-backup/rdiff-backup-fs
>>
>> Present state of the repository is not suitable for future debian packaging.
>>
>> Like tags are not imported from the hg repo like in another fork.
>> https://github.com/gruszczy/rdiff-backup-fs
>>
>> Your help ensures fixes are forwarded upstream with periodic releases of
>> rdiff-backup-fs.
>>
>> There is a new PR from downstream:https://github.com/rdiff-backup/rdiff-backup-fs/pulls
>>
>> Regards,
>> Syed Shahrukh Hussain.
>> --
>> OSS Revival
>> Empowering open-source, one project at a time.
>> *https://ossrevival.org/ <https://ossrevival.org/> <https://ossrevival.org/>*
>>
>> --
>> Patrik Dufresne
>> IKUS Software
>> https://www.ikus-soft.com/
>> 514-971-6442
>> St-Colomban, QC J5K 1T9
>>