Re: [GIT PULL] Squashfs pull request for 2.6.29

Linus Torvalds
2009-01-10T18:31:25Z

On Sat, 10 Jan 2009, Andrew Morton wrote:
>
> More importantly, the filesystem driver has to be able to read older
> filesystem instances. This is a userspace-visible binary interface!
> A really complex one.

Well, the good news is that read-only filesystems are _sooo_ much simpler
than any real filesystem that quite frankly, on a "complexity" scale it's
still way way down there.

Also, if it's not used for backup (and I don't think anybody would),
there's actually less reason to be back-wards compatible. I know I changed
cramfs a few times incompatibly, simply becaus "you might as well just
re-run the user tools to generate the image". It was for a similar need,
and the image really always goes along with the kernel.

I think squashfs usage would be similar - you'd not have squashfs as a
standalone media, it would be a "installation medium" thing.

Linus