From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: from mga14.intel.com ([143.182.124.37]) by merlin.infradead.org with esmtp (Exim 4.80.1 #2 (Red Hat Linux)) id 1WFfWF-0001GC-4e for linux-mtd@lists.infradead.org; Tue, 18 Feb 2014 07:55:08 +0000 Message-ID: <1392710080.21319.52.camel@sauron.fi.intel.com> Subject: Re: [PATCH v6 2/3] ubi-utils: Add ubiblkvol tool From: Artem Bityutskiy To: Ezequiel Garcia Date: Tue, 18 Feb 2014 09:54:40 +0200 In-Reply-To: <1392581041-8099-3-git-send-email-ezequiel.garcia@free-electrons.com> References: <1392581041-8099-1-git-send-email-ezequiel.garcia@free-electrons.com> <1392581041-8099-3-git-send-email-ezequiel.garcia@free-electrons.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8" Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Cc: Thomas Petazzoni , Mike Frysinger , Richard Weinberger , Michael Opdenacker , linux-mtd@lists.infradead.org, Piergiorgio Beruto , Brian Norris , David Woodhouse , Willy Tarreau Reply-To: dedekind1@gmail.com List-Id: Linux MTD discussion mailing list List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , On Sun, 2014-02-16 at 17:04 -0300, Ezequiel Garcia wrote: > With the addition of block device access to UBI volumes, we now > add a simple userspace tool to access the new ioctls. I noticed you call this driver "block device access to UBI volumes" or even "block device interface of UBI volumes". I am not sure we picked the best terminology. Could we please discuss this a bit. Here are my thoughts. Essentially, what you have implemented is a R/O block driver. This driver works on top of UBI volumes. It uses simple "1-to-1" mapping, which is basically its media format. Someone, in theory, may implement a more sophisticated block driver which would be an R/W driver with good random I/O performance. This driver would not use 1-to-1 mapping. It would have internal block mapping tables, and garbage-collector. There may be multiple drivers like this implemented. These multiple drivers would have the same user interface - the block API. But very different implementation, and different incompatible media format. What would be our terminology then, I wonder. What do yo think: * If your driver is ubiblock, how would those be called, any idea? * How would we distinguish between them when doing 'modprobe' ? * How would we specify which one to use when using "ubiblkvol" ? BTW, I am not sure "ubiblkvol" is a good name, may be you have other ideas? Absent better ideas, may be calling it 'ubiblock' would be better, just like the name of the driver? This would at least use less of the "namespace". Thoughts? -- Best Regards, Artem Bityutskiy