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 <[email protected]> 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