On Sun, 2006-06-11 at 14:39 +1000, Neil Brown wrote: > On Saturday June 10, jeff@xxxxxxxxxx wrote: > > Theodore Tso wrote: > > > So you you would be in OK of a model where we copy fs/ext3 to > > > "fs/ext4", and do development there which would merged rapidly into > > > mainline so that people who want to participate in testing can use > > > ext3dev, while people who want stability can use ext3 --- and at some > > > point, we remove the old ext3 entirely and let fs/ext4 register itself > > > as both the ext3 and ext4 filesystem, and at some point in the future, > > > remove the ext3 name entirely? > > > > Yep, and in addition I would argue that you can take the opportunity to > > make ext4 default to extents-enabled, and some similar behavior changes > > (dir_index default?). The existence of both ext3 and ext4 means you can > > be more aggressive in turning on stuff, IMO. > > > > Jeff > > I'm wondering what all this has to say about general principles of > sub-project development with the Linux kernel. > > There is a strong tradition of software projects having a 'stable' > branch and a 'development' branch, and having both available and both > receiving bug fixes (at least) so that users can choose what best > suits their needs. > > Due to the (quite appropriate) lack of a stable API for kernel > modules, it isn't really practical (and definitely isn't encouraged) > to distribute kernel-modules separately. This seems to suggest that > if we want a 'stable' and a 'devel' branch of a project, both branches > need to be distributed as part of the same kernel tree. > > Apart from ext2/3 - and maybe reiserfs - there doesn't seem to be much > evidence of this happening. Why is that? > > - is -mm enough? It seems to be enough for small updates, but > doesn't seem to be enough for more major projects. How long > have the ext3 patches been in -mm?? (I cannot actually seem > to find them there at all) > To clarify, the first 4 patches of the series are bug fixes for both 32 bit ext3 (with current on-disk layout) and 48 bit ext3(extents based), they are in mm tree now. The rest of the patches 5-13 to support 48 bit ext3 based on extents are not in mm tree. - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-fsdevel" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
