Re: [PATCH] ext2: Don't export ext2_mask_flags() to user space

[Thierry Reding]

* Ted Ts'o wrote:
> On Thu, Mar 22, 2012 at 08:00:41AM +0200, Artem Bityutskiy wrote:
> > On Thu, 2012-03-22 at 06:53 +0100, Thierry Reding wrote:
> > > What's the recommended fix for packages that cannot or will not use
> > > libext2fs, like busybox? Copy the required parts into a private header
> > > and use that instead?
> > 
> > The normal way is to just keep a private copy of the whole header file.
> > Because the on-disk format stays compatible, those programs do not have
> > to update the header very often - only rarely if they want to support
> > some new feature.
> 
> Even if they're not iwlling to use libext2fs (for space reasons, I
> would assume?  It can't be because of license compatibility issues
> since they are both GPLv2), they could just simply grab the ext2_fs.h
> from e2fsprogs.  That has all of the file system definitions for ext2,
> ext3, and ext4.

In fact there is already a file, e2fs_defs.h, that seems to be based on the
contents of the ext2_fs.h from the kernel. I've posted two patches to the
busybox mailing list that fix the build without using linux/ext2_fs.h. For
reference, they can be found here:

	http://lists.busybox.net/pipermail/busybox/2012-March/077563.html
	http://lists.busybox.net/pipermail/busybox/2012-March/077562.html

Do you still want me to prepare a patch to unexport ext2_fs.h or will you
take care of it?

Thierry

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