Re: Question about Reiser4

William Heimbigner
2007-04-23T05:57:55Z

> William Heimbigner wrote:
>> > Eric Hopper wrote:
>> > > I know that this whole effort has been put in disarray by the
>> > > prosecution of Hans Reiser, but I'm curious as to its status.
>> >
>> > It was in disarray well before. Many of the reiser4 features,
>> > like filesystem plugins, make more technical sense in the Linux
>> > VFS, but made more business sense for Namesys as a reiserfs 4
>> > thing. That lead to a stalemate.
>> >
>> Shouldn't it be a matter of stability though?
>
> A lot of other things matter. Things like a willingness to
> maintain the code after it gets merged, or at least turning
> the code into something the community is willing to maintain
> if the original developers stop maintaining it.
>
>> Benchmarks suggest that reiser4 is a good file system; reiser4 is the
>> successor to the already-accepted reiserfs; we've got experimental ext4
>> support but no reiser4 support, etc.
>
> Namesys kind of abandoned reiserfs after work on reiser4
> started. Taking in a new code base on such a track record
> is not a good idea when the code is not in a shape where
> the community wants to maintain it.
>
>> I don't see why something like plugins should matter. If it works enough
>> to be marked as experimental, why shouldn't reiser4 support be included?
>> It's a pain for me personally to have to patch any kernel with reiser4
>> support so I can use the reiser4 fs.
>
> You basically have three options:
>
> 1) keep patching every time you upgrade the kernel
>
> 2) use another filesystem
>
> 3) become the new reiser4 maintainer and turn the code
> into something that Linus is willing to accept

I suppose. I have a feeling there's an underlying issue behind "code
standards" (and even then, I think that code standards is ultimately an
excuse for not integrating reiser4 support into the kernel, but that's
just my opinion). However, is the code really in such a shape that the
community doesn't want to maintain it? Obviously there's a significant
number of people interested in reiser4 - if there weren't, questions like
this wouldn't keep getting asked.

William Heimbigner
icxcnika@mar.tar.cc