39 lines
1.7 KiB
Markdown
39 lines
1.7 KiB
Markdown
libbtrfsutil
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============
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libbtrfsutil is a library for managing Btrfs filesystems. It is licensed under
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the LGPL. libbtrfsutil provides interfaces for a subset of the operations
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offered by the `btrfs` command line utility. It also includes official Python
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bindings (Python 3 only).
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Development
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-----------
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The [development process for btrfs-progs](../README.md#development) applies.
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libbtrfsutil only includes operations that are done through the filesystem and
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ioctl interface, not operations that modify the filesystem directly (e.g., mkfs
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or fsck). This is by design but also a legal necessity, as the filesystem
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implementation is GPL but libbtrfsutil is LGPL. That is also why the
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libbtrfsutil code is a reimplementation of the btrfs-progs code rather than a
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refactoring. Be wary of this when porting functionality.
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libbtrfsutil is semantically versioned separately from btrfs-progs. It is the
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maintainers' responsibility to bump the version as needed (at most once per
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release of btrfs-progs).
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A few guidelines:
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* All interfaces must be documented in `btrfsutil.h` using the kernel-doc style
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* Error codes should be specific about what _exactly_ failed
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* Functions should have a path and an fd variant whenever possible
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* Spell out terms in function names, etc. rather than abbreviating whenever
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possible
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* Don't require the Btrfs UAPI headers for any interfaces (e.g., instead of
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directly exposing a type from `linux/btrfs_tree.h`, abstract it away in a
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type specific to `libbtrfsutil`)
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* Preserve API and ABI compatability at all times (i.e., we don't want to bump
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the library major version if we don't have to)
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* Include Python bindings for all interfaces
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* Write tests for all interfaces
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