Re: [discuss] Illumos future and compatibility with Open-ZFS

[Jorgen Lundman <lundman@lundman.net>]

> 3. Open-ZFS on Windows (and OSX), beta/release candidates
> This is fork of Open-ZFS that is updated to Open-ZFS Master from release candidate to release candidate. While I suppose Jorgen Lundman (maintainer) originally planned a full integration of Windows ZFS directly into Open-ZFS, it seems that he now intends to use Open-ZFS simply as upstream, just like Illumos was upstream for a long time for BSD and Linux.



I’m not really part of the main-thrust of this discussion, but allow me to make a comment or two. 

It was more that the PRs for macOS and Windows were 4 and 3 years old, and it is a “non-zero” 
amount of effort to keep them synchronised all the time. Not a complaint, just how it is. I can’t 
just be me (this side) who wants to merge, but the other side of the aisle need to want to as well, 
or it isn’t for the greater good of the project. So I removed, or did I just stop updating? the PRs for them. 
Could re-visit this again in future when things are more quiet - but I have noticed that it is never “more quiet”.

It is worth mentioning that being “just downstream” of the main project is not without its quirks. In
particular, whenever a PR is merged (more so if it changes things in the os/ directory) I have to learn 
and understand each PR fully, to be able to add similar code to my os/ entries. Whereas
the first-class platforms, Linux and FreeBSD, get that consideration during development of the PR (or
it wont be merged) - and assistance with either platform, if needed. And fully tested before merge.
So I have to pretty much know all PRs added, which tends to mean merging with upstream is not as fast 
as it could be, and sometimes they are delayed considerably - which then makes it a bit more hassle 
to chase down the developers if I need to - or point out how much is breaks for me.

Secondary, I have to merge and re-merge some files constantly - as in manually add in my lines/changes -
for example the assembly files or the zfs-tests environment map file. It can not be automated, unless I
hook up to chatgpt or something. But I have redone some of these changes so many times it is now
tempting to make the code less-portable, as in, just have my own versions of the files - and hope I don’t 
miss any crucial changes in future.

Still, it would be fun, if easy, to do an illumos port of OpenZFS - but sadly, I do not have time
due to the 2 ports I currently maintain.

Cheers,

Jorgen