Re: [RFC][PATCH] ensure i_ino uniqueness in filesystems without permanent inode numbers (via idr)

[Jeff Layton <jlayton@redhat.com>]

Brad Boyer wrote:
> On Fri, Dec 01, 2006 at 12:21:36PM -0500, Jeff Layton wrote:
>> Here's an updated (but untested) patch based on your suggestions. I also went
>> ahead and made the exported symbols GPL-only since that seems like it would be
>> appropriate here. Any further thoughts on it?
> 

> This seems like exactly the sort of thing that should be a generic
> service available to all filesystem implementors whether it's GPL or
> not. The usual justification for GPL-only is that it's something
> random modules shouldn't be touching anyway, but it's something that
> some part of the tree which could be a module needs.

My main reasoning for doing this was that the structures involved are 
per-superblock. There is virtually no reason that a filesystem would 
ever need to touch these structures in another filesystem.

So, this is essentially a service to make it easy for filesystems to 
implement i_ino uniqueness. I'm not terribly interested in making things 
easier for proprietary filesystems, so I don't see a real reason to make 
this available to them. They can always implement their own scheme to do 
this.

I'm certainly open to discussion though. Is there a compelling reason to 
open this up to proprietary software authors?

-- Jeff