From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1764003AbYECRST (ORCPT ); Sat, 3 May 2008 13:18:19 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1761431AbYECRSI (ORCPT ); Sat, 3 May 2008 13:18:08 -0400 Received: from smtp1.linux-foundation.org ([140.211.169.13]:51987 "EHLO smtp1.linux-foundation.org" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1761237AbYECRSF (ORCPT ); Sat, 3 May 2008 13:18:05 -0400 Date: Sat, 3 May 2008 10:16:55 -0700 (PDT) From: Linus Torvalds To: Willy Tarreau cc: =?ISO-8859-15?Q?J=F6rn_Engel?= , Stephen Rothwell , Andrew Morton , David Woodhouse , Arnd Bergmann , linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Subject: Re: LogFS merge In-Reply-To: <20080503070318.GR8474@1wt.eu> Message-ID: References: <20080502133234.GA24080@logfs.org> <20080502202151.GB24080@logfs.org> <20080502213146.GD24080@logfs.org> <20080502215833.GG24080@logfs.org> <20080503070318.GR8474@1wt.eu> User-Agent: Alpine 1.10 (LFD 962 2008-03-14) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org On Sat, 3 May 2008, Willy Tarreau wrote: > > Why not merge it and mark it experimental then ? In fact, this is about > what you're looking for : reduced merge hassle and more testers. The real issue for me wrt a filesystem is the on-disk layout. If we know that on-disk structures need change, we shouldn't merge it. It doesn't matter if that can be worked around with some backwards- compatibiltiy flag: we should simply not encourage that kind of behaviour. It would be much much better to just get a layout that is as final as possible and avoid the "there are two different formats, because the first format was known to be broken" issue. Will extensions happen and add features anyway? Probably. But that's different from merging something knowing that the on-disk format will change. Linus