From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Jeff Garzik Subject: Re: [PATCH 1/5] Forking ext4 filesystem from ext3 filesystem Date: Thu, 10 Aug 2006 16:52:49 -0400 Message-ID: <44DB9CA1.2050306@garzik.org> References: <1155172622.3161.73.camel@localhost.localdomain> <20060809233914.35ab8792.akpm@osdl.org> <44DB61D7.1000109@us.ibm.com> <20060810111839.51c73911.akpm@osdl.org> <44DB9582.6010609@garzik.org> <20060810133338.8d1f6061.akpm@osdl.org> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Cc: Mingming Cao , linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, ext2-devel@lists.sourceforge.net, linux-fsdevel@vger.kernel.org Return-path: Received: from srv5.dvmed.net ([207.36.208.214]:14982 "EHLO mail.dvmed.net") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S932129AbWHJUwx (ORCPT ); Thu, 10 Aug 2006 16:52:53 -0400 To: Andrew Morton In-Reply-To: <20060810133338.8d1f6061.akpm@osdl.org> Sender: linux-fsdevel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-Id: linux-fsdevel.vger.kernel.org Andrew Morton wrote: > On Thu, 10 Aug 2006 16:22:26 -0400 > Jeff Garzik wrote: > >> I strongly disagree that ext3 should be subject to a spring cleaning. >> Comments, whitespace, very very minor things, sure. Trying to get rid >> of brelse() when _many_ other filesystems also use it? ext4 material. > > We should seek to minimise the difficulty of cross-porting bugfixes and > enhancements. Putting cleanups in only ext4 works against that. > > ext3 will be around for many years yet. We cannot just let it rot due to > some false belief that performing routine maintenance against it will for > some magical reason cause it to break. Because ext4 is impending, you want to push a bunch of cleanups into ext3 over a short span of time. That's not routine maintenance at all. We're not talking about routine maintenance. In your words, we are talking about spring cleaning. Why not let the devel/stable system work its magic? If the cleanups are viable, proving that first in ext4 should give us more confidence to put them into ext3. Cross-porting bugfixes and cleanups will _obviously_ be quite easy, during the first few months of ext4's life. Just look at ext2->ext3 history. Regardless of when you make the split, there will be a bunch of stuff people wish to backport after the split occurs. Given that, it makes more sense to testbed the changes in ext4 first. Jeff