Re: [PATCH, RFC] btrfs-progs: require mkfs -f force option to overwrite filesystem or partition table

[Tsutomu Itoh <t-itoh@jp.fujitsu.com>]

On 2013/02/26 16:05, Dave Chinner wrote:
> On Tue, Feb 26, 2013 at 01:25:11PM +0900, Tsutomu Itoh wrote:
>> On 2013/02/26 13:06, Eric Sandeen wrote:
>>> On 2/25/13 9:55 PM, Tsutomu Itoh wrote:
>>>> EXPERIMENTAL... It's certainly so.
>>>> However, I think that we should not add the option that it troubles
>>>> a lot of people.
>>>
>>> Well, I sent it as an RFC.  Chris merged it; I'll defer to his judgement.
>>
>> Agreed. So, I sent revert request to Chris :)
>
> Where? I want to NACK the revert - this is not a matter to joke
> about.

I apologize for my childish expression.
I'll also defer to Chris's judgement.

Thanks,
Tsutomu

>
> You're all smart enough to know how to use shell aliases and script
> variables, so this "need to type -f all the time" argument holds
> absolutely no weight at all. Further, most of the time you're
> working on systems that donMy childish expression is mistaken. 't hold any data you care about and so
> the consequences of a mistake are very minor.
>
> However, users often make mistakes and we have to take that into
> account when deciding on the default behaviour of our tools.
> Tools that destroy data *must* err on the side of conservative
> default behaviour simply because of the fact that destroying the
> wrong data can have catastrophic consequences. It's not your data
> that is being destroyed, but it is data that you have a
> *responsibility to safeguard* as a filesystem developer.
>
> Think about it this way: how happy would an important customer be if
> they decided that *you* were directly responsible for a major data
> loss incident because they found it would have been prevented by the
> "-f" patch? I don't think that the explanation of "it was
> inconvenient to me" would be an acceptable answer.....
>
> Cheers,
>
> Dave.
>