A variety of methods and tools are available to aid ZFS developers. It's strongly recommended that when developing a patch the --enable-debug configure option should be set. This will enable additional correctness checks and all the ASSERTs to help quickly catch potential issues.

In addition, there are numerous utilities and debugging files which provide visibility into the inner workings of ZFS. The most useful of these tools are discussed in detail on the Troubleshooting page.

Where can I ask for help?

The zfs-discuss mailing list or IRC are the best places to ask for help. Please do not file support requests on the GitHub issue tracker.

How Can I Contribute?

Reporting Bugs

Please contact us via the zfs-discuss mailing list or IRC if you aren't certain that you are experiencing a bug.

If you run into an issue, please search our issue tracker first to ensure the issue hasn't been reported before. Open a new issue only if you haven't found anything similar to your issue.

You can open a new issue and search existing issues using the public issue tracker.

When opening a new issue, please include the following information at the top of the issue:

What distribution (with version) you are using.
The spl and zfs versions you are using, installation method (repository or manual compilation).
Describe the issue you are experiencing.
Describe how to reproduce the issue.
Including any warning/errors/backtraces from the system logs.

When a new issue is opened, it is not uncommon for developers to request additional information.

In general, the more detail you share about a problem the quicker a developer can resolve it. For example, providing a simple test case is always exceptionally helpful.

Be prepared to work with the developers investigating your issue. Your assistance is crucial in providing a quick solution. They may ask for information like:

Your pool configuration as reported by zdb or zpool status.
Your hardware configuration, such as
- Number of CPUs.
- Amount of memory.
- Whether your system has ECC memory.
- Whether it is running under a VMM/Hypervisor.
- Kernel version.
- Values of the spl/zfs module parameters.
Stack traces which may be logged to dmesg.

Suggesting Enhancements

OpenZFS is a widely deployed production filesystem which is under active development. The team's primary focus is on fixing known issues, improving performance, and adding compelling new features.

You can view the list of proposed features by filtering the issue tracker by the "Type: Feature" label. If you have an idea for a feature first check this list. If your idea already appears then add a +1 to the top most comment, this helps us gauge interest in that feature.

Otherwise, open a new issue and describe your proposed feature. Why is this feature needed? What problem does it solve?

Pull Requests

General

All pull requests, except backports and releases, must be based on the current master branch and should apply without conflicts.
Please attempt to limit pull requests to a single commit which resolves one specific issue.
Make sure your commit messages are in the correct format. See the Commit Message Formats section for more information.
When updating a pull request squash multiple commits by performing a rebase (squash).
For large pull requests consider structuring your changes as a stack of logically independent patches which build on each other. This makes large changes easier to review and approve which speeds up the merging process.
Try to keep pull requests simple. Simple code with comments is much easier to review and approve.
All proposed changes must be approved by an OpenZFS organization member.
If you have an idea you'd like to discuss or which requires additional testing, consider opening it as a draft pull request. Once everything is in good shape and the details have been worked out you can remove its draft status. Any required reviews can then be finalized and the pull request merged.

Tests and Benchmarks

Every pull request will by tested by the buildbot on multiple platforms by running the zfs-tests.sh and zloop.sh test suites.
To verify your changes conform to the style guidelines, please run make checkstyle and resolve any warnings.
Static code analysis of each pull request is performed by the buildbot; run make lint to check your changes.
Test cases should be provided when appropriate. This includes making sure new features have adequate code coverage.
If your pull request improves performance, please include some benchmarks.
The pull request must pass all required ZFS Buildbot builders before being accepted. If you are experiencing intermittent TEST builder failures, you may be experiencing a test suite issue. There are also various buildbot options to control how changes are tested.

Testing

All help is appreciated! If you're in a position to run the latest code consider helping us by reporting any functional problems, performance regressions or other suspected issues. By running the latest code to a wide range of realistic workloads, configurations and architectures we're better able quickly identify and resolve potential issues.

Users can also run the ZFS Test Suite on their systems to verify ZFS is behaving as intended.

Style Guides

Repository Structure

OpenZFS uses a standardised branching structure.

The "development and main branch", is the branch all development should be based on.
"Release branches" contain the latest released code for said version.
"Staging branches" contain selected commits prior to being released.

Branch Names:

Development and Main branch: master
Release branches: zfs-$VERSION-release
Staging branches: zfs-$VERSION-staging

$VERSION should be replaced with the major.minor version number.
(This is the version number without the .patch version at the end)

Coding Conventions

We currently use C Style and Coding Standards for SunOS as our coding convention.

This repository has an .editorconfig file. If your editor supports editorconfig, it will automatically respect most of this project's whitespace preferences.

Additionally, Git can help warn on whitespace problems as well:

git config --local core.whitespace trailing-space,space-before-tab,indent-with-non-tab,-tab-in-indent

Commit Message Formats

New Changes

Commit messages for new changes must meet the following guidelines:

In 72 characters or less, provide a summary of the change as the first line in the commit message.
A body which provides a description of the change. If necessary, please summarize important information such as why the proposed approach was chosen or a brief description of the bug you are resolving. Each line of the body must be 72 characters or less.
The last line must be a Signed-off-by: tag. See the Signed Off By section for more information.

An example commit message for new changes is provided below.

This line is a brief summary of your change

Please provide at least a couple sentences describing the
change. If necessary, please summarize decisions such as
why the proposed approach was chosen or what bug you are
attempting to solve.

Signed-off-by: Contributor <contributor@email.com>

Coverity Defect Fixes

If you are submitting a fix to a Coverity defect, the commit message should meet the following guidelines:

Provides a subject line in the format of Fix coverity defects: CID dddd, dddd... where dddd represents each CID fixed by the commit.
Provides a body which lists each Coverity defect and how it was corrected.
The last line must be a Signed-off-by: tag. See the Signed Off By section for more information.

An example Coverity defect fix commit message is provided below.

Fix coverity defects: CID 12345, 67890

CID 12345: Logically dead code (DEADCODE)

Removed the if(var != 0) block because the condition could never be
satisfied.

CID 67890: Resource Leak (RESOURCE_LEAK)

Ensure free is called after allocating memory in function().

Signed-off-by: Contributor <contributor@email.com>

Signed Off By

A line tagged as Signed-off-by: must contain the developer's name followed by their email. This is the developer's certification that they have the right to submit the patch for inclusion into the code base and indicates agreement to the Developer's Certificate of Origin. Code without a proper signoff cannot be merged.

Git can append the Signed-off-by line to your commit messages. Simply provide the -s or --signoff option when performing a git commit. For more information about writing commit messages, visit How to Write a Git Commit Message.

Co-authored By

If someone else had part in your pull request, please add the following to the commit: Co-authored-by: Name <gitregistered@email.address> This is useful if their authorship was lost during squashing, rebasing, etc., but may be used in any situation where there are co-authors.

The email address used here should be the same as on the GitHub profile of said user. If said user does not have their email address public, please use the following instead: Co-authored-by: Name <[username]@users.noreply.github.com>

12 KiB Raw Blame History

Contributing to OpenZFS

Table Of Contents

What should I know before I get started?

Get ZFS

Debug ZFS