Add a draft roadmap page

1 files changed, 76 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/roadmap-ga.mdwn b/roadmap-ga.mdwn
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9cff766
--- /dev/null
+++ b/roadmap-ga.mdwn
@@ -0,0 +1,76 @@
+[[!meta title="DRAFT: Roadmap for FORMET GREEN ALBATROSS"]]
+
+This is a DRAFT roadmap for the new repository format (GREEN
+ALBATROSS) to become the default format in Obnam. Feedback on this
+roadmap is welcome via the obnam-devel mailing list.
+
+Note that only things that affect the new repository format are
+relevant for this roadmap. All other bugs or features are off-topic
+and will not be included.
+
+Success criteria for being done with the new format
+========================================================================
+
+* All major operations need to be tolerably fast, and run in 4 GiB of
+  RAM. The test data set is to be the snapshot of almost 5 TiB data
+  from my own file server. The backup repository should use encryption
+  and compression.
+
+  - backup
+  - forget
+  - restore (or possibly verifyy, to avoid needing another 5 TiB space)
+  - fsck
+
+* Obnam supports Attic-style chunking (lowest N bits of weak checksum
+  means chunk ends), and things are still tolerably fast.
+
+* The manual needs to be updated to cover all GA things and needs to
+  have a comparison between 6 and GA, and also advice for converting
+  to the new format ("start over" is sufficient, though a conversion
+  tool would be nice).
+
+* The obnam.org website needs to be reviewed, and any design docs
+  updated.
+
+* At least three months needs to have passed of actively asking Obnam
+  users to use GA, without showstopper bugs being reported.
+
+* No known need to change the new repository format.
+
+
+Roadmap
+========================================================================
+
+This is the rough order of things that I know needs doing. There are
+certainly things missing from the list, reality always wins over my
+most careful planning.
+
+* Add new benchmarks for all the success criteria. All the operations
+  listed above should be benchmarked. Then analyze results and make
+  any optimizations needed.
+
+* Add Attic-style chunking. These chunks are not of fixed size at
+  fixed positions in the files. This matters to the repository format
+  because there may be lots more chunks, depending on settings, and
+  the format needs to handle that.
+
+* Add sparse file handling to GA. Sparse files are not used by
+  everyone, but those that do, really want them. Obnam currently
+  doesn't handle them optimally and has not way of representing them
+  in the repository except as long sequences of all-bits-zero bytes
+
+* Make sure Obnam handles the case of an unknown username or group
+  name of a file (only numeric uid or gid known). This is important
+  when it's not feasible to get the user/group name from an SFTP
+  server. This affects the repository format only a little, but it
+  needs to allow storing a value to represent "not known", and all
+  code needs to be to deal with that.
+
+* Review obnam.org website and make any necessary updates.
+
+* Review Obnam manual and make any necessary updates. Co-ordinate with
+  translators to get non-English versions of the manual to also be
+  updated.
+
+* Make an Obnam release with a beta level version of GA, and ask
+  people to use it and report results.