On Wed, Dec 05, 2012 at 05:18:43PM +0100, Martin Steigerwald wrote: > Dave provided technical reasons. > > First in the patch description and then in: > > https://lkml.org/lkml/2012/11/26/700 There were no technical reasons. We are only reserving a bit. And different file systems don't support all of the various different fallocate flags already --- for example, not all file systems support the punch system call. Yes, I could create an entrely new ioctl() that looks just like fallocate, but supports the extra bit, just so that Dave and others don't have to be offended about the existence of that extra bit --- but Linus (and others) have considered ioctl()'s evil, since there is no type checking, and it's just silly to create a separate interface just because somebody doesn't think some other file system shouldn't implement a particular feature --- especially since it's not like we're have any kind of shortage of bits in the fallocate field. Heck, I probably have more to complain about with the inode flags field, which were originally created specifically for ext2/3/4, and which has since been grabbed for use by other file systems, including btrfs. You haven't heard me kvetching because btrfs has grabbed btrfs-specific inode flags for nocow and notail... no one even bother to try to get it past the fs-devel shed painting crew before *those* bits were allocated --- and I am absolutely fine with that. - Ted -- 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
