Re: [Ext2-devel] [RFC 0/13] extents and 48bit ext3

Jeff Garzik
2006-06-09T17:12:22Z

Alex Tomas wrote:
>>>>>> Jeff Garzik (JG) writes:
>
> JG> That is what the entirety of Linux development is -- step-by-step.
>
> JG> It is OBVIOUS that it would take five minutes to start ext4.
>
> right. it's not a problem to *start*. it's a problem it maintain.
> day by day fs/ext3 and fs/ext4 will get more and more diffs.
> at some point it will be a headache to apply patches from ext3
> to ext4 and back. I known this very well ....

As Linus has stated, we have empirical evidence that splitting
filesystems works, for both stability and development speed.

The number of patches to ext[23] will trickle off over time. As the
obvious example, ext4 would receive the extent and 48bit patches rather
than ext3 :)

Jeff