Re: reiser4progs do not handle the reiser4 format changes

[Hans Reiser <reiser@namesys.com>]

Edward Shishkin wrote:

> David Masover wrote:
>
>> E.Gryaznova wrote:
>>
>>> Notification:
>>>
>>> The reiser4 format was changed in reiser4-for-2.6.11-5.patch and new
>>> reiser4 kernel code is able to handle the old format.
>>
>>
>>
>> Good, so I don't have to reformat _immediately_...
>>
>> But, why isn't it for 2.6.12 yet?  We're already on at least
>> 2.6.12.2, last I checked...
>>
>>> The reiser4progs-1.0.4 are not able to handle the format changes.
>>> The fix for reiser4progs will be ready next week.
>>
>>
>>
>> Will there be a conversion tool?
>>
>>
>
> No. Reiser4progs just will support a set of new plugins which have
> been added to the kernel.
> In particular, mkfs.reiser4 should allow user to specify the plugins
> like other existing
> ones. This will be a way to create cryptcompress files per superblock.
> There is another
> more flexible way (which is compatible with the previous one) to
> create it per file/directory,
> but it uses deprecated metas interface..
> Note: since cryptcompress plugin is unstable, the new options are
> supposed to be undocumented.
>
> Thanks,
> Edward.
>
>
>
So why does this create a format change that breaks things?  I cannot
see why it should do so, please explain.

We cannot change disk formats.  We promised that we would not.  Why did
this happen?  Did it have a good technical motivation or was it an
accident of coding.

This should not be done to users.

Hans