Re: [PATCH] reiserfs: Deprecate reiserfs

[Jan Kara <jack@suse.cz>]

On Thu 24-02-22 08:31:27, Dave Chinner wrote:
> On Wed, Feb 23, 2022 at 03:26:53PM +0100, Jan Kara wrote:
> > Reiserfs is relatively old filesystem and its development has ceased
> > quite some years ago. Linux distributions moved away from it towards
> > other filesystems such as btrfs, xfs, or ext4. To reduce maintenance
> > burden on cross filesystem changes (such as new mount API, iomap, folios
> > ...) let's add a deprecation notice when the filesystem is mounted and
> > schedule its removal to 2024.
> 
> Two years might be considered "short notice" for a filesystem, but I
> guess that people running it because it is stable will most likely
> also linger on stable kernels where it will live "maintained" for
> many years after it has been removed from the upstream code base.

Yeah, I guess that is the case usually. Anyway based on feedback from one
reiserfs user I've pushed the date to 2025.

> > Signed-off-by: Jan Kara <jack@suse.cz>
> > ---
> >  fs/reiserfs/Kconfig | 10 +++++++---
> >  fs/reiserfs/super.c |  2 ++
> >  2 files changed, 9 insertions(+), 3 deletions(-)
> > 
> > Here's my suggestion for deprecating reiserfs. If nobody has reasons against
> > this, I'll send the patch to Linus during the next merge window.
> 
> Is there a deprecation/removal schedule somewhere that documents
> stuff like this? We documented in the XFS section of the kernel
> admin guide (where we also document mount option and
> sysctl deprecation and removal schedules), but I don't think
> anything like that exists for reiserfs or for filesystems in
> general.

The only document I'm aware of is Documentation/process/deprecated.rst
for which filesystem deprecation seems inappropriate. So no I don't think
we have such general document for filesystems.

> Other than that, the patch looks good.

Thanks for review!

								Honza
-- 
Jan Kara <jack@suse.com>
SUSE Labs, CR