Re: [PATCH] befs: remove unused endian functions

Luis de Bethencourt
2016-06-01T19:31:11Z

On 01/06/16 20:20, Andrew Morton wrote:
> On Tue, 31 May 2016 21:59:03 +0100 Luis de Bethencourt <luisbg@osg.samsung.com> wrote:
>
>> On 31/05/16 21:54, Al Viro wrote:
>>> On Tue, May 31, 2016 at 02:27:57PM +0100, Luis de Bethencourt wrote:
>>>> Remove endianness conversion functions that are declared but never used.
>>>
>>> Well... As long as it stays read-only - sure, you don't need to convert
>>> anything to on-disk types.
>
> I think it would be best to leave the code as-is. The compiler will
> remove it all so there's a very small amount of compile-time cost. We
> could just comment the code out but then they would rot over time,
>

Hi Andew,

Sorry for submitting a patch that got nacked. I have two other in befs, but they
are small and trivial.

>>
>> Hello,
>>
>> While reading the BeFS book "Practical Filesystems" I have gotten really
>> interested in this and it's why I am reading/learning the Linux
>> implementation.
>>
>> The idea of adding write support has crossed my mind, but I wanted to know
>> if you would be interested in this before I start looking into it. Are you?
>>
>> It would take some time and there are other things to clean in the befs code
>> first though.
>
> It could be a fun starter project but I have to say, befs is not a very
> valuable place in which to spend your time nor is befs the best place
> in which to develop familiarity. A more modest project within a more
> mainstream part of the kernel would be a better investment.
>

That is a good point. One of the reasons I've been reading the Linux
implementation of befs is because it is unmaintained. I thought I could help, but
it also means there isn't huge interest for more support.

Do you have any suggestions of more modest projects within other file systems?
Something that would be a better time investment.

Thanks for the help,
Luis