Assessment of the iteration that has ended

The goal of the previous iteration was:

The goal for this iteration is to tidy up database abstraction code in the Obnam client and implement the performance improvements Lars did prototype code for.

This was completed, apart from actually merging the change, ahead of time, so the iteration is cut short.

Discussion

Current development theme

The current theme of development for Obnam is convenience. The choices are performance, security, convenience, and tidy-up, at least currently.

Tidy-up is about tying up loose ends, fix minor issues, refactoring code, and otherwise making things better, more tidy, without much impact on end users.

Repository review

Lars reviewed all the open issues, merge requests, and CI pipelines for all the projects in the Obnam group on gitlab.com.

Container Images

• Open issues: 0
• Merge requests: 0
• Additional branches: 0
• CI: OK

A scheduled pipeline now rebuilds the images automatically every week, so there's no need to manually trigger this for each iteration.

obnam.org

• Open issues: 0
• Merge requests: 0
• Additional branches: 0
• CI: not defined

obnam-benchmark

• Open issues: 11
• Merge requests: 0
• Additional branches: 0
• CI: not defined

summain

• Open issues: 0.
• Merge requests: 0.
• Additional branches: 0.
• CI: OK.

There were no open issues, no extra branches, and no open merge requests. There is no CI for this repository.

obnam

• Open issues: 51
• Merge requests: 2
• Additional branches: 0
• CI: OK

Lars added the schema-change label to obnam#192 and obnam#193.

Goals

Goal for 1.0 (not changed this iteration)

The goal for version 1.0 is for Obnam to be an utterly boring backup solution for Linux command line users. It should just work, be performant, secure, and well-documented.

It is not a goal for version 1.0 to have been ported to other operating systems, but if there are volunteers to do that, and to commit to supporting their port, ports will be welcome.

Other user interfaces is likely to happen only after 1.0.

The server component will support multiple clients in a way that doesn’t let them see each other’s data. It is not a goal for clients to be able to share data, even if the clients trust each other.

Goal for the next few iterations (new for this iteration)

The goal for next few iterations is to have Obnam be easier and safer to change, both for developers and end users. This means that developers need to be able to make breaking changes without users having to suffer. User shall be able to migrate their data, when they feel it worthwhile, not just because there is a new version.

Goal for this iteration (new for this iteration)

The goal for this iteration is to prepare for future schema changes.

Commitments for this iteration

Lars will work on Obnam client database abstractions and performance. The goal for these is for Obnam to be able to run obnam backup on a live data set of a million files that haven't changed since the previous backup in less than 30 seconds, on Lars's development server.

Lars intends to work on the following issues:

• obnam#42 -- Chunk checksums are in cleartext
  • rename the "sha256" chunk metadata field to "label"
  • on the server, treat "sha256" as if it said "label"
  • this doesn't fix the issue, merely paves way for a fix
  • 1h
• obnam#153 -- Depends on vulnerable chrono
  • replace use of chrono with the time crate: we only use it to generate a timestamp and time can do that now
  • 1h
• obnam#19 -- Doesn't document all the metadata that various systems have and what Obnam does about them
  • document what is known to be missing, then close the issue with a note that any other things that may be missing should be reported as new issues
  • 1h
• obnam#194 -- Can only handle one backup schema version at a time
  • this includes obnam#192 -- "fileno" in the SQL schema should be "fileid"
  • 4h

Meeting participants

• Lars Wirzenius