Should we change the behaviour of -P for lsblk in util-linux for Jammy?

[Matthew Ruffell]

Hi All,

Thank you for your reviews and recommendations.

We will go with option (3).

Launchpad bug:

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/util-linux/+bug/1961542

Debdiff:

https://launchpadlibrarian.net/587119305/lp1961542_jammy.debdiff

mwh has helped sponsor the upload to jammy-proposed, as 2.37.2-4ubuntu3, thanks!

https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/util-linux/2.37.2-4ubuntu3

I will keep an eye out for any issues that arise with software that changed to
parse the shell compatible column names and didn't retain support for the
standard column names, although I'm not expecting to find any examples.

Existing MAAS users should be able to deploy Jammy with no issues once this
lands in -release.

Thanks,
Matthew

On Mon, Feb 21, 2022 at 11:09 AM Michael Hudson-Doyle
<michael.hudson at canonical.com> wrote:
>
> I too vote for (3). I think (2) would be the next least-bad option but given the fundamental-ness of util-linux I think it's better to be safe.
>
> Cheers,
> mwh
>
> On Sat, 19 Feb 2022 at 02:43, Paride Legovini <paride at ubuntu.com> wrote:
>>
>> Bryce Harrington wrote on 18/02/2022:
>> > On Thu, Feb 17, 2022 at 01:00:07PM +1300, Matthew Ruffell wrote:
>> >> Hi all,
>> >>
>> >> I'm looking for a bit of advice about landing a new feature in util-linux, as
>> >> things have gotten a little complicated, and with feature freeze looming, a
>> >> second opinion would be much appreciated.
>> >>
>> >> e.g. lsblk -P now outputs LOG_SEC instead of LOG-SEC.
>> >>
>> >> So, what I need advice on is the next steps. Should we:
>> >>
>> >> 1) Do nothing, accept 2.32.2 behaviour for -P in Jammy, which is a change from
>> >> Focal/Impish, and will abruptly change again with the release of 2.38 likely to
>> >> land in KK. MAAS and Curtin are already fixed, no issues there, users must
>> >> upgrade to latest stable MAAS and curtin on Jammy release. Older Curtin and MAAS
>> >> will break.
>> >>
>> >> 2) Backport the new 10+ commits into 2.27.2 in Jammy and hope we don't cause any
>> >> regressions with the significant amount of code being changed. We keep the same
>> >> behaviour that users expect from Focal/Impish, and users can now use
>> >> -y / --shell if they want. Older MAAS and Curtin continue to work.
>> >>
>> >> 3) Revert the single patch which caused all of this,
>> >> 58b510e580 libsmartcols: sanitize variable names on export output
>> >> which is a tidier and well tested solution, and drop the patch when util-linux
>> >> is rebased to 2.38 in KK. This keeps existing behaviour in Focal/Impish, and
>> >> enables older MAAS and Curtin to keep working.
>> >>
>> >> I'm leaning toward suggesting 3) at this stage, but this is mostly to keep
>> >> existing users happy on their older versions of MAAS.
>> >
>> > I think your hunch for #3 does sound like the safer approach to me as
>> > well.  Unless there's a huge number of users asking for the new feature,
>> > those who do need it can either wait until it's generally available, or
>> > use a workaround with some awk filters or whatnot.
>>
>> I'm also +1 on option (3). The issue I can see with (3) is with
>> downstream software parsing  `lsblk --version` to know how to deal with
>> the output of -P. However (2) is not a solution for this (we'd still
>> diverge from the upstream behavior for that version) and option (1) has
>> the issues you mentioned.
>>
>> Paride
>>
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