linux-ext4 - Re: [Lsf-pc] [LSF/MM TOPIC] Drop ext2/ext3 codebase? When?

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Date:	Fri, 04 Feb 2011 11:17:53 -0600
From:	James Bottomley <James.Bottomley@...senPartnership.com>
To:	Ric Wheeler <ricwheeler@...il.com>
Cc:	Jan Kara <jack@...e.cz>, Eric Sandeen <sandeen@...hat.com>,
	Michael Rubin <mrubin@...gle.com>,
	lsf-pc@...ts.linuxfoundation.org, linux-fsdevel@...r.kernel.org,
	Andrew Morton <akpm@...ux-foundation.org>,
	linux-ext4@...r.kernel.org
Subject: Re: [Lsf-pc] [LSF/MM TOPIC] Drop ext2/ext3 codebase? When?

On Fri, 2011-02-04 at 12:03 -0500, Ric Wheeler wrote:
> On 02/04/2011 08:17 AM, Jan Kara wrote:
> > On Thu 03-02-11 11:32:01, Michael Rubin wrote:
> >> On Thu, Feb 3, 2011 at 7:08 AM, Eric Sandeen<sandeen@...hat.com>  wrote:
> >>> If we can have a real plan for moving in this direction though, I'd
> >>> support it.  I'm just not sure how we get enough real testing under
> >>> our belts to be comfortable with dropping ext[23], especially as
> >>> most distros now default to ext4 anyway.
> >> Eric what sort of testing are you looking for?
> > I believe Ted wrote a good summary of what combinations of options would
> > need to be tested on a regular basis to get at least some confidence that
> > the switch could work.
> >
> >> I admit I like having ext2 around for comparisons in bug situations.
> >> It really helps to isolate the problem area. How painful is the
> >> upkeep?
> > Well, for me it's a couple of hours per week on average I'd say. Plus
> > there is some work other people do when changing some VFS/MM interfaces
> > influencing all the filesystems.
> >
> > The time I spend is enough to keep ext3 in a good shape I believe but I
> > have a feeling that ext2 is slowly bitrotting. Sometime when I look at
> > ext2 code I see stuff we simply do differently these days and that's just
> > a step away from the code getting broken... It would not be too much work
> > to clean things up and maintain but it's a work with no clear gain (if you
> > do the thankless job of maintaining old code, you should at least have
> > users who appreciate that ;) so naturally no one does it.
> >
> > 								Honza
> 
> I would definitely be interesting in figuring out if and when we can drop one or 
> both of ext2 and ext3. The number of actively supported file systems to test for 
> correctness and performance is getting to be a challenge.

ext2 yes ... I think there's no way we can drop ext3: it's still a
current default filesystem for most distributions.  Now, if we discuss
dropping ext2 and working out an end of life plan for ext3 (for the
feature removals schedule) so we don't eventually get into the same
position with it as we are with ext2, then this sounds like a plan.

> Great topic, might require beer though to be done right :)

I'm invoking the anti-discrimination statutes here on behalf of those of
us who don't like beer.

James


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