Re: LogFS merge

[Willy Tarreau <w@1wt.eu>]

On Sat, May 03, 2008 at 12:11:11PM +0300, Adrian Bunk wrote:
> On Sat, May 03, 2008 at 09:03:18AM +0200, Willy Tarreau wrote:
> > On Fri, May 02, 2008 at 11:58:33PM +0200, Jörn Engel wrote:
> > > On Fri, 2 May 2008 14:39:23 -0700, Linus Torvalds wrote:
> > > > 
> > > > Quite frankly, if that's the case, I'd *much* rather see that worked on 
> > > > first, so that there aren't any format changes that are already known to 
> > > > be pending before it even gets merged.
> > > > 
> > > > Would it be at all possible to try to do that, or is it just "too far 
> > > > out"?
> > > 
> > > Definitely possible.  The last similar change happened in December and
> > > took until March until I ran out of stupid regressions from it.  Most
> > > likely there are still some I just haven't found yet.
> > > 
> > > The question is when to draw the line and say "This is useful as-is for
> > > a sufficient number of users."  I don't have a good answer to it.  I
> > > certainly expect more changes in the future, including format changes.
> > > And if we wait for them all to happen, it won't get merged this decade.
> > 
> > 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.

OK, -mm is generally more suited for this usage then.

> What you call "more testers" would be people who try it in production
> (e.g. to overcome shortcomings of JFFS2) thinking it was stable.

No, it is just to gain more exposure by easing tester's job. People
packaging distros for embedded systems do a lot of R&D, and having
new features to experiment with is very important to them. And no,
that does not mean they'll immediately use it in production. And
even if some did, they would know why they did it and it's their
problem.

Willy