[OpenIndiana-discuss] Merging OI + OmniOS? (And OpenZFS vs ZFS)

[Guenther Alka]

cc:omnios-discuss

I am a bit late to this discussion.
The same discussion happened when OmniTi closed OmniOS and OmniOS CE 
started. I was strongly in favour to combine OmniOS and OI efforts then 
as both are too small on their own to be relevant beside to a niche 
market each but it did not happened at that time. Maybe OI and OmniOS 
are now similar enough with the additional Open-ZFS offence that 
threatens both.

I accept it is always hard to integrate two different communities where 
both have a different history, user and use cases but maybe it is now 
the time to retry. Last time the base was too different. The OmniOS 
repository while based on Illumos included the new VM/zone options from 
SmartOS while Illumos and so OpenIndioana does not as base is pure 
ongoing Illumos.

So lets begin where both are strong in my opinion wnd where a win-win 
situation may be the case.

OmniOS
A long term stable, a stable and a bloody release in a minimalistik 
approach make it possiblbe to use it for mission critical professional 
server and storage use cases. It will not miss that, so using ongoing 
Illumos is not desirably. When OmniOS started, its repository was quite 
different to Illumos due the VM/zone additions from SmartOS. Please 
correct me but my impression is now that OmniOS bloody is not to 
different to Illumos and therefor OI minimal.

When OmniOS started it was an option to use the OmniOS repository ex 
stable as base for OI. Main argument against as I heard was that the OI 
community was not able to support the OmniOS add-ons. It seems to me 
that this argument is no longer the case. All supported OmniOS releases 
(lts, stable bloody) seems not too different from pure Illumos regarding 
OI add-ons.

OpenIndiana
For me this is the true successor of OpenSolaris. This was a 
distribution to cover minimalistic server use cases up to desktop use. 
It shows what was possible and intended with next Solaris. Its 
repositoty covers both use cases. Stability was not the first demand.

OpenIndiana follow this with ongoing Illumos developments and a 
superiour software repository for all its use cases. Dokumentation is 
also superiour to OmniOS.

Maybe one must think about a possible win-win situation where both can 
retain their independence that is needed due their history and use case 
and where both can see an advantage.


 From my view and personal preferences (not involved in either), it 
seems that OmniOS stable (every 6 months) is quite near to pure Illumos 
so why not use this as base for OpenIndiana instead pure Illumos 
especially as many VM special add-ons from OmniOS are now in Illumos? 
Similar to OmniOS extra, add your repository on top. So a OI 
distribution can be basically OmniOS stable + OI repo instead Illumos + 
OI repo. Maybe use OmniOS basic +extra + the OI repository, just avoid 
double packages or simply do not allow OmniOS extra + OI simultaniously 
to allow same packages for both differently.

What is the advantage: Mainly to combine basic efforts and to allow a 
seamless switch from OmniOS to OpenIndiana (or back when you remove the 
additional packages).  For OmniOS it adds the OI community +use options, 
for OI it adds the stability of a stable or long term stable.

To switch from OmniOS stable to OI unstable: add the OI repo + packages. 
To switch from OI to OmniOS stable, remove the oi repository and packages.

If this does not work for OI, a switch back to Illumos is always an 
option on next snapshot release.

regarding Open-ZFS
I hope (and indeed expect) that the ZFS related parts are combined 
similar to Free-BSD in the future

Gea
@napp-it.org