Re: [PATCH 5/8] generic/740: enable by default

["Theodore Ts'o" <tytso@mit.edu>]

On Mon, Jun 24, 2024 at 09:16:05AM -0700, Darrick J. Wong wrote:
> On Sun, Jun 23, 2024 at 02:10:34PM +0200, Christoph Hellwig wrote:
> > Instead of limiting this test to a few file systems, opt out the
> > file systems supported in common/rc that don't support overwrite
> > checking at all, and those like extN that support it, but only when
> > run interactively.
> 
> If script(1) is installed, can we use it to run mkfs.extX in a sub-pty?
> 
> Or is that not worth the trouble?
> 
> (This is really more of a question for Ted...)

It might not be worth it.  One of the reasons for it is that mkfs.ext4
can be set up to try to pull in libmagic using dlopen, to minimize the
package dependencies for things like the distribution's installer or
minimal root setu[s for Docker, et. al.

As a result, mkfs.ext4's ability a pre-existing foreign fil;e system
won't always work, depending on the libmagic shared libraery is
available.  It will be a lot easier to add a test for this
functionality functionality in e2fsprogs's regression tests, since the
build system will know whether libmagic is available.  So maybe it's
not worth trying to teach generic/740 how to test mkfs.ext4, at least
for now.

Cheers,

					- Ted