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

Gerrit Huizenga
2006-06-09T15:55:05Z

On Fri, 09 Jun 2006 19:28:22 +0400, Alex Tomas wrote:
> JG> "ext3" will become more and more meaningless. It could mean _any_ of
> JG> several filesystem metadata variants, and the admin will have no clue
> JG> which variant they are talking to until they try to mount the blkdev
> JG> (and possibly fail the mount).
>
> debugfs <dev> -R stats | grep features ?

Sounds similar to cat /proc/cpuinfo. How *do* we deal with processors
which have all these many different features? Probably better than we
would if each variant were viewed as a different architecture.

Jeff's approach taken to the rediculous would mean that we'd have
ext versions 1-40 by now at least. I don't think that helps much,
either.

I think the ext2/3 team has done a great job of providing compatibility.
It isn't perfect compatibility forwards *and* backwards, but moving
forwards always seems to be pretty reasonable.

gerrit