Re: LogFS merge

Adrian Bunk
2008-05-03T11:07:39Z

On Sat, May 03, 2008 at 12:44:12PM +0300, Pekka Enberg wrote:
> Hi Adrian,
>
> On Sat, May 3, 2008 at 12:11 PM, Adrian Bunk <bunk@kernel.org> wrote:
> > > Why not merge it and mark it experimental then ? In fact, this is about
> > > what you're looking for : reduced merge hassle and more testers.
> >
> > Andi already answered that one:
> >
> > "Merging file systems too early can quickly ruin their name and that
> > taint is hard to ever get rid again then (e.g. happened to JFS)"
> >
> > And a stable kernel shouldn't be something for getting "more testers",
> > it should be for tested code ready to be used in production.
> > What you call "more testers" would be people who try it in production
> > (e.g. to overcome shortcomings of JFFS2) thinking it was stable.
> >
> > And no, EXPERIMENTAL in the kernel is not usable for keeping people from
> > trying known-whacky code.
>
> I think ext4 already set the precedent that you _can_ do development
> within the 2.6 series, no?

I'd call the ext4 case a mistake we shouldn't repeat.

It's available in the kernel since 2006.

I've seen people using ext4 on their computers running with a corrupted
filesystem since fsck was at that point not yet capable of fixing
whatever was corrupted.

At least one distribution already has ext4 enabled in their kernels.

cu
Adrian

--

"Is there not promise of rain?" Ling Tan asked suddenly out
of the darkness. There had been need of rain for many days.
"Only a promise," Lao Er said.
Pearl S. Buck - Dragon Seed