< Changes
Replace iotop with iotop-c
Summary
Replace (obsolete) iotop with iotop-c
Owner
- Name: Michal Hlavinka
- Email: mhlavink[at]redhat[dot]com
- Name: Boian Bonev
- Email: bbonev1[at]ipacct[dot]com
Current status
- Targeted release: Fedora Linux 40
- Last updated: 2024-01-31
- Discussion thread
- Announced
- FESCo issue: #3156
- Tracker bug: #2262144
- Release notes tracker: <will be assigned by the Wrangler>
Detailed Description
iotop's upstream does not seem to be active much. Latest version is 0.6 that was released 10 years ago. There were some commits once a while after that, but not much.
There is better maintained iotop-c implementation that was originally created for embedded systems. It has small footprint being written in C and not in python. It is a drop in replacement. It's actively developed, has good history of resolving issues, has more features, improved UI (yet almost the same look) and uses the same command line arguments.
In short, we (iotop and iotop-c maintainers) have decided to replace iotop with iotop-c. iotop-c will provide iotop (name) and iotop binary and obsolete original iotop. If there are no issues found, original iotop will be orphaned.
Feedback
Benefit to Fedora
iotop-c implementation has smaller footprint, more features, polished UI, uses same command line arguments and has active upstream that has history of quickly resolving issues.
Scope
- Proposal owners:
1) update iotop-c spec file to obsolete iotop, provide iotop name and provide iotop binary
2) orphan iotop
- Other developers:
N/A
- Release engineering: #Releng issue number
N/A
- Policies and guidelines: N/A (not needed for this Change)
- Trademark approval: N/A (not needed for this Change)
- Alignment with Community Initiatives:
Upgrade/compatibility impact
How To Test
A) before change happens - just install iotop-c and give it a try B) after change happens install iotop, check that you have iotop-c version installed and it works
you can also check that iotop (if installed previously) is automatically replaced by iotop-c during update
User Experience
iotop-c has slightly different UI look, more polished. It also consumes less resources.
Dependencies
none
Contingency Plan
Worst case scenario, we can easily revert the change, but we don't expect any issues as iotop-c isn't that new. It is already present in current Fedora releases as well as other Linux distributions.
Documentation
N/A (not a System Wide Change)