blog/data/2016-04-07-zfs-debian.txt

   1 Title: One in two hundred Debian users using ZFS on Linux?
   2 Tags: english, debian
   3 Date: 2016-04-07 22:30
   4
   5 <p>Just for fun I had a look at the popcon number of ZFS related
   6 packages in Debian, and was quite surprised with what I found.  I use
   7 ZFS myself at home, but did not really expect many others to do so.
   8 But I might be wrong.</p>
   9
  10 <p>According to
  11 <a href="https://qa.debian.org/popcon.php?package=spl-linux">the popcon
  12 results for spl-linux</a>, there are 1019 Debian installations, or
  13 0.53% of the population, with the package installed.  As far as I know
  14 the only use of the spl-linux package is as a support library for ZFS
  15 on Linux, so I use it here as proxy for measuring the number of ZFS
  16 installation on Linux in Debian.  In the kFreeBSD variant of Debian
  17 the ZFS feature is already available, and there
  18 <a href="https://qa.debian.org/popcon.php?package=zfsutils">the popcon
  19 results for zfsutils</a> show 1625 Debian installations or 0.84% of
  20 the population.  So I guess I am not alone in using ZFS on Debian.</p>
  21
  22 <p>But even though the Debian project leader Lucas Nussbaum
  23 <a href="https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2015/04/msg00006.html">announced
  24 in April 2015</a> that the legal obstacles blocking ZFS on Debian were
  25 cleared, the package is still not in Debian.  The package is again in
  26 the NEW queue.  Several uploads have been rejected so far because the
  27 debian/copyright file was incomplete or wrong, but there is no reason
  28 to give up.  The current status can be seen on
  29 <a href="https://qa.debian.org/developer.php?login=pkg-zfsonlinux-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
  30 team status page</a>, and
  31 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=pkg-zfsonlinux/zfs.git">the
  32 source code</a> is available on Alioth.</p>
  33
  34 <p>As I want ZFS to be included in next version of Debian to make sure
  35 my home server can function in the future using only official Debian
  36 packages, and the current blocker is to get the debian/copyright file
  37 accepted by the FTP masters in Debian, I decided a while back to try
  38 to help out the team.  This was the background for my blog post about
  39 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Creating__updating_and_checking_debian_copyright_semi_automatically.html">creating,
  40 updating and checking debian/copyright semi-automatically</a>, and I
  41 used the techniques I explored there to try to find any errors in the
  42 copyright file.  It is not very easy to check every one of the around
  43 2000 files in the source package, but I hope we this time got it
  44 right.  If you want to help out, check out the git source and try to
  45 find missing entries in the debian/copyright file.</p>