From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Jeff Garzik Subject: Re: [RFC 0/13] extents and 48bit ext3 Date: Fri, 09 Jun 2006 16:09:03 -0400 Message-ID: <4489D55F.20103@garzik.org> References: <1149816055.4066.60.camel@dyn9047017069.beaverton.ibm.com> <4488E1A4.20305@garzik.org> <20060609083523.GQ5964@schatzie.adilger.int> <44898EE3.6080903@garzik.org> <448992EB.5070405@garzik.org> <4489A7ED.8070007@garzik.org> <20060609195750.GD10524@thunk.org> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Cc: Andrew Morton , ext2-devel , linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, Linus Torvalds , cmm@us.ibm.com, linux-fsdevel@vger.kernel.org, Alex Tomas , Andreas Dilger Return-path: To: Theodore Tso In-Reply-To: <20060609195750.GD10524@thunk.org> List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Sender: ext2-devel-bounces@lists.sourceforge.net Errors-To: ext2-devel-bounces@lists.sourceforge.net List-Id: linux-fsdevel.vger.kernel.org Theodore Tso wrote: > We don't do this with the SCSI layer where we make a complete clone of > the driver layer so that there is a /usr/src/linux/driver/scsi and > /usr/src/linux/driver/scsi2, do we? And we didn't do that with the > networking layer either, as we added ipsec, ipv6, softnet, and a whole > host of other changes and improvements. > > What we do instead is we have a series of patches, which can be made > available in various experimental trees, and as they get more > polishing and experience with people using it without any problems, > they can get merged into the -mm tree, and then eventually, when they > are deemed ready, into mainline. That is also the normal Linux > development process, and it's worked quite well up until now with ext3. No, there is a key difference between ext3 and SCSI/etc.: cruft is removed. In ext3, old formats are supported for all eternity. > Folks seem to be worried about ext3 being "too important to experiment > with", but the fact remains, we've been doing continuous improvement > with ext3 for quite some time, and it's been quite smooth. The htree > introduction was essentially completely painless, for example --- and I disagree. There were some distro annoyances as I recall. > people liked the fact that they could get the features of indexed > directories without needing to do a complete dump and restore of the > filesystem. Of course people always like new features. :) ext4 should allow you to deliver new features more rapidly, while keeping the existing ext3 happily stable. Jeff