From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Linus Torvalds Subject: Re: [PATCH] multi item packed files Date: Thu, 21 Apr 2005 13:07:25 -0700 (PDT) Message-ID: References: <200504211113.13630.mason@suse.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Cc: Chris Mason , git@vger.kernel.org X-From: git-owner@vger.kernel.org Thu Apr 21 22:02:52 2005 Return-path: Received: from vger.kernel.org ([12.107.209.244]) by ciao.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1DOhrT-0003xU-BI for gcvg-git@gmane.org; Thu, 21 Apr 2005 22:01:19 +0200 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S261842AbVDUUFm (ORCPT ); Thu, 21 Apr 2005 16:05:42 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S261851AbVDUUFm (ORCPT ); Thu, 21 Apr 2005 16:05:42 -0400 Received: from fire.osdl.org ([65.172.181.4]:17321 "EHLO smtp.osdl.org") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S261842AbVDUUFe (ORCPT ); Thu, 21 Apr 2005 16:05:34 -0400 Received: from shell0.pdx.osdl.net (fw.osdl.org [65.172.181.6]) by smtp.osdl.org (8.12.8/8.12.8) with ESMTP id j3LK5Qs4022657 (version=TLSv1/SSLv3 cipher=EDH-RSA-DES-CBC3-SHA bits=168 verify=NO); Thu, 21 Apr 2005 13:05:26 -0700 Received: from localhost (shell0.pdx.osdl.net [10.9.0.31]) by shell0.pdx.osdl.net (8.13.1/8.11.6) with ESMTP id j3LK5PuM021154; Thu, 21 Apr 2005 13:05:25 -0700 To: Krzysztof Halasa In-Reply-To: X-Spam-Status: No, hits=0 required=5 tests= X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 2.63-osdl_revision__1.35__ X-MIMEDefang-Filter: osdl$Revision: 1.109 $ X-Scanned-By: MIMEDefang 2.36 Sender: git-owner@vger.kernel.org Precedence: bulk X-Mailing-List: git@vger.kernel.org On Thu, 21 Apr 2005, Krzysztof Halasa wrote: > > If someone needs better on-disk ratio, (s)he can go with 1 KB filesystem > or something like that, without all the added complexity of packing. I really think the argument that "you can use filesystem feature XYZ" is bogus. I know that I'm not willing to switch filesystems on a whim. I suspect nobody else is either. I'm not going to create a loopback filesystem just for git, it's just too much pain. And dammit, if I'm the original author and likely biggest power-user, and _I_ can't be bothered to use special filesystems, then who can? Nobody. This is why I absolutely do not believe in arguments like "if your filesystem doesn't do tail packing, you shouldn't use it" or "if your don't have name hashing enabled in your filesystem it's broken". I'm perfectly willing to optimize for the common case, but that's as far as it goes. I do not want to make fundamental design decisions that depend on the target filesystem having some particular feature. (I'll happily make decisions that say that the target _OS_ has to have a particular feature, though. I'll require a sane base-level for functionality, but not something like filesystem details). Linus