On Fri, May 02, 2014 at 10:04:07AM -0400, Theodore Ts'o wrote: > On Fri, May 02, 2014 at 11:45:25AM +0200, Lukáš Czerner wrote: > > This is definitely NACK by me. I do not like this and there are > > several reasons why. > > > > First of all the name. Given the history of ext file system we tend > > to increase then number with the new version of file system. However > > you're saying that this is just for testing features ... in that > > case it does not make any sense to call it ext5, but not just that > > it's stupid to call it ext5 especially since we might actually want > > to release ext5 in the future and this would be really confusing for > > everybody involved. > > Yes, the messaging involved with the "ext3" vs "ext4" bump has been > really unfortunate. If I had to do it all over again, I would have > created "ext3dev", and then when it was stable, I would done a: > > git rm -rf fs/ext3 ; git mv fs/ext3dev fs/ext4 > > For example, it would have avoided the problem with SuSE product > managers refusing to support ext4 for multiple years, etc. > > It also would have avoided the problem with people doing comparisons > of ext3 versus xfs, even in April 2014 (see a recent Hacker News > promoted blog article, where in someone kvetched that ext3 didn't > support fallocate). Sigh.... We could still do that, delete ext3 once we think "ext4 + new features" is stable enough. It's not quite having only one extN featureset in operation at a given time, but "a stable one" and "the one we're working on" seems like plenty. > > What about just simply using mkefs.conf to specify the feature set > > we want and use that? > > Yes, it's likely that for 1.43 we'll enable various features by > default. It's been quite deliberate that I haven't enabled by > default, because I wanted to make 100% sure they were completely > stable before enabling them by default. Some of them we may have been Maybe I should have called this 'ext5alpha' or something, just to see if I could generate wider interest in testing. I feel like these new features are stable enough for some thorough testing, but they're a pretty long way from 'completely stable'. How widely are these features being tested? I'm rather dismayed that I still find plenty of bugs to stick in the patchbomb. (Though I'm as guilty as anyone else for contributing new features.) > able to enable by default earlier, but be that as it may, 1.43 is a > good time to make that change. Hmm, I guess you were intending to update the mke2fs.conf definition of ext4, then? --D > > - Ted > > -- > To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-ext4" in > the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx > More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-ext4" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
