Re: [PATCH 01/35 v3] libext2fs: add EXT4_FEATURE_INCOMPAT_INLINE_DATA flag

[Zheng Liu <gnehzuil.liu@gmail.com>]

On Tue, Aug 07, 2012 at 02:22:14PM -0400, Theodore Ts'o wrote:
> On Sun, Jul 01, 2012 at 09:48:24PM +0800, Zheng Liu wrote:
> > From: Zheng Liu <wenqing.lz@taobao.com>
> > 
> > Add EXT4_FEATURE_INCOMPAT_INLINE_DATA flag to support inline
> > data feature.
> > 
> > Signed-off-by: Zheng Liu <wenqing.lz@taobao.com>
> 
> I've pulled in the part of this patch which renames
> INCOMPAT_INLINEDATA to INCOMPAT_INLINE_DATA to the next branch.
> 
> As far as actually adding this feature to
> EXT2_LIB_FEATURE_INCOMPAT_SUPP, I have two comments.  In general, it's
> best to add this to the patch series at the very end, so that if
> someone is bisecting e2fsprogs, there's no chance that they end up
> with the feature only partially supported.
> 
> If the development of the patch is going to take a long time, what I
> have done in the past is to add the feature to
> EXT2_LIB_SOFTSUPP_INCOMPAT and EXt2_LIB_SOFTSUPP_RO_COMPAT.  This
> allows dumpe2fs and debugfs to recognize the file system, which is
> handy for debugging and development.  But it doesn't allow e2fsck to
> try to check or repair file systems with the feature enabled, since
> usually e2fsck support is one of the last things to be coded up.
> 
> Then when we're ready to turn on the feature and fully support things,
> we'll have a patch which adds the feature to
> EXT2_LIB_FEATURE_INCOMPAT_SUPP, and remove it from the SOFTSUPP mask.

Thanks for teaching me. :-)

Regards,
Zheng