Re: [PATCH 0/2] cramfs: Add mount option "swapendian"

[Andi Drebes <lists-receive@programmierforen.de>]

> > This patch introduces the mount option "swapendian" for cramfs.
> > When this option is set, cramfs is able to mount an image that
> > was created on a machine whose endianness differs from the mounting
> > machine's one.
> 
> Please don't do it this way.
> 
> It would be *much* better to just standardize on one endianness, and be 
> done with it. That way there are no config options, no confusion, and the 
> code is smaller, simpler, and faster. Because nn unconditional byte swap 
> is generally faster than a conditional non-byte-swap!
This is a valid objection. The problem is that the endianness for cramfs
has never been standardized. Now there are filesystem images in both little
and big endian out there. I encountered this problem first when I tried to
mount my router's initrd. Yes, I know, I could have converted the image into
little endian. I just find that it is more consistent to support both kinds
of endianness.

> So can you please just make it little-endian? 
Actually, in my eyes, it would be better to create a new version of cramfs
that standardizes the endianness and the block size. But that doesn't solve
the problems one might have with old images.

> There can't be that many big-endian machines that really care about old 
> cramfs images..
s.a. (There's at least one...)

	Andi