Just to be clear about what's being discussed here: The proposal is to create a *windows* filesystem driver to allow Windows machines to read and write locally-attached XFS filesystems, correct? Presumably, such filesystems would be device-portable to Linux or other machines also running XFS? Cheers, -- jr 'will ask stupid questions for food' a ----- Original Message ----- > From: "Shaun Gosse" <sgosse@xxxxxxx> > To: "Yuji Saeki" <yuji1@xxxxxxxx>, xfs@xxxxxxxxxxx > Sent: Monday, December 9, 2013 11:16:38 AM > Subject: RE: XFS...Windows? > Well…at the risk of jumping into something here: > > “would SGI be okay with that”: keep in mind this a community project. > There are contributors to XFS here at SGI. There is also a lot of work > done by employees of Redhat as well as other companies (and a few > freelance / people interested regardless of current position). Anyhow, > just a quibble to note that it’s not a question of what SGI dictates. > Although I will note that I’ve actually raised the idea of XFS on > Windows internally (here at SGI) and while it’s not a priority I would > say there’s at least some interest. At the least, if you build it, > we’ll certainly take a look at it. ☺ > > I saw an email a while back on this list that implied someone was > trying to work on that iirc; I didn’t see any follow-up from it. There > are also some projects that look abandoned which tried to do this I > recall from previous searches on this. > > One of the suggestions I heard when I was considering this was to look > at how the ext port on Windows works. That looks mildly inactive > itself but should be good for comparison. > > Internally, SGI has a proprietary system, CXFS, which does clustered > XFS including Windows as client nodes. So we’ve got code that actually > does XFS data writes from Windows nodes. Of course, the tricky bit is > managing all of the metadata/logging, which isn’t touched from Windows > in that system, but it’s just another tidbit to note “yes, this type > of system should be possible”. > > As far as licensing, I’m certainly no expert, but AFAIK it should be > possible to use the same GPL license as you note and make an > open-source Windows driver for this using as much of the current XFS > code as is convenient. There are nuances in the license though. I can > try to find the article if you’re interested: I read a post previously > by someone who had developed a GPL driver on Windows and was noting > concerns about linking against closed source libraries (essentially > decided it was okay because it (a) could be considered a system > library and (b) they were starting a fresh project so they could add > extra exemptions specifically allowing that). > > I am a novice at XFS and, frankly, at Windows kernel device > development as well. But I’m certainly interested in seeing a GPL > XFS-on-Windows developed at some point. If you go ahead with this, I’d > definitely appreciate any information and would be glad to assist in > any way I can. And myself personally, I’d absolutely appreciate > someone else taking the lead on this, because with other issues I’m > working on, I would be unlikely to put serious solo effort into this > anytime soon. > > Cheers, > -Shaun Gosse > CXFS Windows > SGI > > From: xfs-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:xfs-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxx] On > Behalf Of Yuji Saeki > Sent: Sunday, December 08, 2013 5:25 PM > To: xfs@xxxxxxxxxxx > Subject: XFS...Windows? > > Congratulations on your file system, it’s quite nice. I’ve benchmarked > it myself, it’s very impressive. I’m curious though, is there are > thought to a Windows driver? If someone ported the most current-stable > version to Windows (free) under the same license ‘GNU Lesser General > Public License’ with entire credit to XFS, would SGI be okay with > that? A ‘no-warranty implied’ (etc) kind of protection of course. > Quite a few devs that I work with enjoy the XFS filesystem and we dev > in both Linux and Windows. We’re very interested in making this happen > with respect to the XFS project. > > _______________________________________________ > xfs mailing list > xfs@xxxxxxxxxxx > http://oss.sgi.com/mailman/listinfo/xfs -- Make Election Day a federal holiday: http://wh.gov/lBm94 100k sigs by 12/14 Jay R. Ashworth Baylink jra@xxxxxxxxxxx Designer The Things I Think RFC 2100 Ashworth & Associates http://baylink.pitas.com 2000 Land Rover DII St Petersburg FL USA #natog +1 727 647 1274 _______________________________________________ xfs mailing list xfs@xxxxxxxxxxx http://oss.sgi.com/mailman/listinfo/xfs
