Re: [PATCH 5/5] xfs: fold xfs_change_file_space into xfs_ioc_space

Dave Chinner
2013-10-15T21:47:50Z

On Tue, Oct 15, 2013 at 08:31:43AM -0700, Christoph Hellwig wrote:
> On Mon, Oct 14, 2013 at 04:08:07PM +1100, Dave Chinner wrote:
> > One question, though:
> >
> > > + case XFS_IOC_ALLOCSP:
> > > + case XFS_IOC_ALLOCSP64:
> > > + case XFS_IOC_FREESP:
> > > + case XFS_IOC_FREESP64:
> >
> > Should we, at this point, mark these ioctls as deprecated and
> > schedule then for removal given that we've recommended against using
> > them for the past 10 years and we have fallocate() now?
>
> I don't see any reason to remove them given that it's only about 15
> extra lines of code. But if you care enough to get rid of them we
> probably need multiple years of actuall warnings emmited when used
> before actually removing them. I would be very surprised if there
> aren't same users that wouldn't argue very vocally against their
> removal.

I'll put a significant quantity of beer on the table if anyone other
than xfstests is actually using these ioctls. In all my years of
working with XFS, I've never seen a single user of them, even on
Irix.

The one person I know who was considering using XFS_IOC_ALLOCSP
convinced me (quite easily) to implement XFS_IOC_ZERO_RANGE for them
because writing all those zeros to re-initialise pre-allocated VM
images was going to be prohibitively expensive...

Anyway, it was just a thought.

Cheers,

Dave.
--
Dave Chinner
david@fromorbit.com