From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Linus Torvalds Subject: Re: silent semantic changes with reiser4 Date: Sun, 29 Aug 2004 14:01:20 -0700 (PDT) Message-ID: References: <20040828170515.GB24868@hh.idb.hist.no> <4131074D.7050209@namesys.com> <4131A3B2.30203@namesys.com> <41323436.80007@namesys.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Cc: Helge Hafting , Rik van Riel , Spam , Jamie Lokier , David Masover , Diego Calleja , christophe@saout.de, vda@port.imtp.ilyichevsk.odessa.ua, christer@weinigel.se, Andrew Morton , wichert@wiggy.net, jra@samba.org, hch@lst.de, linux-fsdevel@vger.kernel.org, Kernel Mailing List , flx@namesys.com, reiserfs-list@namesys.com, Al Viro Return-path: list-help: list-unsubscribe: list-post: Errors-To: flx@namesys.com To: Hans Reiser In-Reply-To: <41323436.80007@namesys.com> List-Id: linux-fsdevel.vger.kernel.org On Sun, 29 Aug 2004, Hans Reiser wrote: > > The difference is that cat uses open() not openat(). Hans. Step back a bit. Stop this idiocy about thinking that this is all about you, and all about your reiser4 "metas" etc. This is about VFS interfaces, and about being generic and _useful_. Quite frankly, there is absolutely _zero_ point to make attributes just because reiser4 can implement them. Zero. Nada. Zilch. It just won't matter, because people are NOT GOING TO SWITCH TO REISER4 IN MASS. So in order to make this useful, it has to be: - stable. This means that if Al Viro asks about locking and aliasing issues, you don't ignore it, you ask "how high?" - portable. Preferably across operating systems, but at the very _least_ across filesystems. See the NFSv4 thing, for example. - useful to the people who would actually use it. Right now that's samba, and not a whole lot else. For everybody else, the pain of not having _all_ major filesystems support it is probably so insurmountable that it's just not going to happen. Do you get it? If you can't get your mind out of your little current reiser4 issues, don't even bother talking about it. Look through the thread on "possible design issues for hybrids" for me actually talking with Al on how to handle problem #1. That's one important thing, and in fact, that one is important whether we expose it to a normal "open()" call or not, since all the same aliasing issues exist _regardless_ of interfaces. "openat()" happens to be _one_ solution to #2 and #3. You haven't given any constructive input to _any_ of the problems, and you keep on raising totally irrelevant issues. Face the music, Hans. If you can't solve those three problems, whatever you do simply DOES NOT MATTER. In particular, in the two last emails to you, I tried to show that "openat()" is _independent_ of streams/attributes. That it has semantics that have absolutely _nothing_ to do with metas. And in BOTH CASES you could not wrap your brain around that fact, and kept on harping about meta's. There are bigger issues here. I'm perfectly happy to _also_ expose the streams as regular filenames, but I've tried to explain that that doesn't work for directories, for example, so YOU CANNOT -JUST- talk about the filename-only thing. You do need to have a different namespace. Full stop. What's so hard to understand about that? So stop ignoring the issues. Stop ignoring the fact that not everything revolves around how you happened to implement something. Get with the program. Linus