Re: [rfc] Near-constant time directory index for Ext2

Linus Torvalds
2001-02-22T05:20:23Z

In article <97230a$16k$1@penguin.transmeta.com>,
Linus Torvalds <torvalds@transmeta.com> wrote:
>
>Another way of saying this: if you go to the complexity of no longer
>being a purely block-based filesystem, please go the whole way. Make the
>thing be extent-based, and get away from the notion that you have to
>allocate blocks one at a time. Make the blocksize something nice and
>big, not just 4kB or 8kB or something.

Btw, this is also going to be a VM and performance issue some time in
the future. Tgere are already CPU's that would _love_ to have 64kB
pages etc, and as such a filesystem that doesn't play with the old silly
"everthing is a block" rules would be much appreciated with the kind of
people who have multi-gigabyte files and want to read in big chunks at a
time.

So either you have a simple block-based filesystem (current ext2, no
extents, no crapola), or you decide to do it over. Don't do some
half-way thing, please.

Linus