Re: [GIT PULL] ocfs2 changes for 2.6.32

Linus Torvalds
2009-09-14T21:33:01Z

On Fri, 11 Sep 2009, Joel Becker wrote:
>
> Linus, et al,
> Here are the ocfs2 feature changes for 2.6.32. The big ticket
> item is the reflinkat(2) system call and ocfs2's support for it. The
> ocfs2 support accounts for all but a handful of the changes. The
> remaining few patches are fixes.

I _really_ want some kind of ack's for new filesystem system calls like
this. I'm not going to pull a new 'reflink[at]()' system call just based
on a single filesystem.

Yes, there's clearly been _some_ discussion, but (a) I've not seen it
(since it's been on 'fsdevel', which is one of those single-topic mailing
lists that I'm totally uninterested in, since they tend to become clique
groups) and (b) you don't even say whether the thing has been acked by
things like the security angle etc.

So I'm not pulling this. Not until I get the feeling that there is
consensus.

I also don't understand why it's called 'reflink'. Why not 'copyfile'? We
should not name things by implementation, we should name things by what
they _do_. And I'm not seeing what is so 'reflink' about this that it's
not a 'copyfile'. I also am not entirely clear on why you need the source
name, and not - for example - an 'fd'.

Are we going to add 'freflink[at]()' at some point?

So I want explanations for the naming, I want sign-offs from other
filesystem (and security) people, etc. What I do _not_ want is to get a
"please pull" request for a filesystem, and notice that it's suddenly not
all about just that particular filesystem, without any indication of who
you've been talking to etc etc.

Linus