Re: [PATCH, 3.7-rc7, RESEND] fs: revert commit bbdd6808 to fallocate UAPI

Theodore Ts'o
2012-12-07T21:14:50Z

On Fri, Dec 07, 2012 at 02:30:19PM -0500, Steven Rostedt wrote:
> How is this similar? By adding this bit, we removed incentive from a
> group of developers that have the means to fix the real issue at hand
> (the performance problem with ext4). Thus, it means that they have a work
> around that's good enough for them, but the rest of us suffer.

That assumes that there **is** a way to claw back the performance
loss, and Chris Mason has demonstrated the performance hit exists with
xfs as well (950 MB/s vs. 400 MB/s; that's more than a factor of two).
Sometimes, you have to make the engineering tradeoffs. That's why
we're engineers, for goodness sakes. Sometimes, it's just not
possible to square the circle.

I don't believe that the technique of forcing people who need that
performance to suffer in order to induce them to try to engineer a
solution which may or may not exist is really the best or fairest way
to go about things.

- Ted