Build bots can't handle dependencies

[FransUrbo]

Just looked at #3656 and it occurred to me that the build-bots can't handle dependencies. This happen every now and then, especially to SPL (don't know if we have/need other dependencies than that).

We've talked about adding dependency info in the commit log before (last one I think was 6e9710f). I don't know exactly how the build-bots are setup, but shouldn't it be possible to gather the information we/the build-bots need from the commit log?.

Maybe duplicate what we have for Signed-off-by: … and make it more standardized. Something like Depend-on: …? Then the build-bots would just build the dependency + PR/patch first, then zfs…

Should be fairly straight forward… ?

[behlendorf]

The buildbot tests the zfs commits by checking out that exact commit from the pull request. That can result in build failures because it always tries to build against the latest spl source. We could definitely extend the buildbot to accept a hint in the commit message, I like the 'Depends-on:' tag. Longer term we can pull the spl in-tree to prevent the issue entirely.

The good news here is we're working to make all of the configuration, scripts, and infrastructure behind the zfs buildbot available. This should come together over the next few months and then it will be possible for the community to help customize it to do things like this.

[FransUrbo]

Considering that there's quite a lot of duplication of code between spl and zfs, merging spl into zfs and clean it up is probably a good idea. We're not the only ones that need something like the "Solaris Porting Layer" either, right so if we do that, it would/could benefit others as well.

[behlendorf]

One of the reasons they were originally kept separate was so that other projects could use it. However, I don't know if any other projects using it so that's not a big reason in practice. There aren't many compelling reason to keep them separate anymore.

[chrisrd]

+1 on combining

[tuxoko]

Yeah, I'd really like to see it merged.

[behlendorf]

Replaced by openzfs/zfs-buildbot#5.