From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1030471AbWFIUJK (ORCPT ); Fri, 9 Jun 2006 16:09:10 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1030478AbWFIUJK (ORCPT ); Fri, 9 Jun 2006 16:09:10 -0400 Received: from srv5.dvmed.net ([207.36.208.214]:1697 "EHLO mail.dvmed.net") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1030471AbWFIUJJ (ORCPT ); Fri, 9 Jun 2006 16:09:09 -0400 Message-ID: <4489D55F.20103@garzik.org> Date: Fri, 09 Jun 2006 16:09:03 -0400 From: Jeff Garzik User-Agent: Thunderbird 1.5.0.2 (X11/20060501) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Theodore Tso CC: Alex Tomas , Andrew Morton , ext2-devel , linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, Linus Torvalds , cmm@us.ibm.com, linux-fsdevel@vger.kernel.org, Andreas Dilger Subject: Re: [Ext2-devel] [RFC 0/13] extents and 48bit ext3 References: <1149816055.4066.60.camel@dyn9047017069.beaverton.ibm.com> <4488E1A4.20305@garzik.org> <20060609083523.GQ5964@schatzie.adilger.int> <44898EE3.6080903@garzik.org> <448992EB.5070405@garzik.org> <4489A7ED.8070007@garzik.org> <20060609195750.GD10524@thunk.org> In-Reply-To: <20060609195750.GD10524@thunk.org> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Spam-Score: -4.2 (----) X-Spam-Report: SpamAssassin version 3.1.1 on srv5.dvmed.net summary: Content analysis details: (-4.2 points, 5.0 required) Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Theodore Tso wrote: > We don't do this with the SCSI layer where we make a complete clone of > the driver layer so that there is a /usr/src/linux/driver/scsi and > /usr/src/linux/driver/scsi2, do we? And we didn't do that with the > networking layer either, as we added ipsec, ipv6, softnet, and a whole > host of other changes and improvements. > > What we do instead is we have a series of patches, which can be made > available in various experimental trees, and as they get more > polishing and experience with people using it without any problems, > they can get merged into the -mm tree, and then eventually, when they > are deemed ready, into mainline. That is also the normal Linux > development process, and it's worked quite well up until now with ext3. No, there is a key difference between ext3 and SCSI/etc.: cruft is removed. In ext3, old formats are supported for all eternity. > Folks seem to be worried about ext3 being "too important to experiment > with", but the fact remains, we've been doing continuous improvement > with ext3 for quite some time, and it's been quite smooth. The htree > introduction was essentially completely painless, for example --- and I disagree. There were some distro annoyances as I recall. > people liked the fact that they could get the features of indexed > directories without needing to do a complete dump and restore of the > filesystem. Of course people always like new features. :) ext4 should allow you to deliver new features more rapidly, while keeping the existing ext3 happily stable. Jeff