Re: [PATCH] befs: remove unused endian functions

From: Andrew Morton
Date: Wed Jun 01 2016 - 15:20:35 EST


On Tue, 31 May 2016 21:59:03 +0100 Luis de Bethencourt <luisbg@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> On 31/05/16 21:54, Al Viro wrote:
> > On Tue, May 31, 2016 at 02:27:57PM +0100, Luis de Bethencourt wrote:
> >> Remove endianness conversion functions that are declared but never used.
> >
> > Well... As long as it stays read-only - sure, you don't need to convert
> > anything to on-disk types.

I think it would be best to leave the code as-is. The compiler will
remove it all so there's a very small amount of compile-time cost. We
could just comment the code out but then they would rot over time,

>
> Hello,
>
> While reading the BeFS book "Practical Filesystems" I have gotten really
> interested in this and it's why I am reading/learning the Linux
> implementation.
>
> The idea of adding write support has crossed my mind, but I wanted to know
> if you would be interested in this before I start looking into it. Are you?
>
> It would take some time and there are other things to clean in the befs code
> first though.

It could be a fun starter project but I have to say, befs is not a very
valuable place in which to spend your time nor is befs the best place
in which to develop familiarity. A more modest project within a more
mainstream part of the kernel would be a better investment.