Re: Collapse ext2 and 3 please

[R. J. Wysocki]

On Friday 25 of June 2004 20:41, Timothy Miller wrote:
> Sean Neakums wrote:
> > Timothy Miller <miller@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes:
> >>Sean Neakums wrote:
> >>>I seem to remember somebody, I think maybe Andrew Morton, suggesting
> >>>that a no-journal mode be added to ext3 so that ext2 could be removed.
> >>>I can't find the message in question right now, though.
> >>
> >>As an option, that might be nice, but if everyone were to start using
> >>ext3 even for their non-journalled file systems, the ext2 code would
> >>be subject to code rot.
> >
> > My paraphrase is at fault here.  In the above, "removed" == "removed
> > from the kernel tree".
>
> I understood that.
>
> Let me be more clear.  I agree with other people's comments to the
> effect that ext2 and ext3 have different goals and therefore different
> and potentially incompatible optimizations.  If ext3 had a mode that
> made it equivalent to ext2, which encouraged people to only compile in
> ext3 even for ext2 partitions (to save on kernel memory), then future
> ext2 code bases would get less use and therefore less testing and
> therefore more code rot.
>
> It is reasonable to allow the redundancy between ext2 and ext3 in order
> to allow them to diverge.  This kind of future-proofing mentality
> underlies the reasons why kernel developers don't want to completely
> stablize the module ABI, for example.
>

Let me add my 2c, please.

I think that the most of users will use ext3 or reiserfs anyway, unless they 
actually _prefer_ ext2 for some reasons (let's face it: the most of users 
just follow the distribution defaults and the most of distributors set either 
ext3 or reiserfs as a default).  This, however, confines the use of ext2 to a 
(relatively) small group of users having special needs and means that the 
future ext2 code will get less testing in any case, just like old device 
drivers do (eg. old CD-ROM drivers ;-)).

I'm not for collapsing the ext2 and ext3 code bases, but IMHO your argument 
does not apply.

I think that the good reason for keeping both ext* code bases in the kernel 
tree is that _there_ _are_ _some_ people who will need ext2 for some 
purposes, so why should we pull the carpet from under them?

Yours,
rjw

----------------------------
For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public 
relations, for nature cannot be fooled.
					-- Richard P. Feynman
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