Re: [MAINTAINERS/KERNEL SUMMIT] Trust and maintenance of file systems

Steven Rostedt
2023-09-07T11:17:48Z

On Thu, 7 Sep 2023 13:38:40 +1000
Dave Chinner <david@fromorbit.com> wrote:

> Hence, IMO, gutting a filesystem implementation to just support
> read-only behaviour "to prolong it's support life" actually makes
> things worse from a maintenance and testing persepective, not
> better....

From your other email about 10 years support, you could first set a fs to
read-only, and then after so long (I'm not sure 10 years is really
necessary), then remove it.

That is, make it the stage before removal. If no one complains about it
being read-only after several years, then it's highly likely that no one is
using it. If someone does complain, you can tell them to either maintain
it, or start moving all their data to another fs.

For testing, you could even have an #ifdef that needs to be manually
changed (not a config option) to make it writable.

-- Steve