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

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Message-ID: <20110204131739.GC4104@quack.suse.cz>
Date:	Fri, 4 Feb 2011 14:17:39 +0100
From:	Jan Kara <jack@...e.cz>
To:	Michael Rubin <mrubin@...gle.com>
Cc:	Eric Sandeen <sandeen@...hat.com>, Jan Kara <jack@...e.cz>,
	lsf-pc@...ts.linuxfoundation.org, linux-fsdevel@...r.kernel.org,
	linux-ext4@...r.kernel.org,
	Andrew Morton <akpm@...ux-foundation.org>
Subject: Re: [LSF/MM TOPIC] Drop ext2/ext3 codebase? When?

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
-- 
Jan Kara <jack@...e.cz>
SUSE Labs, CR
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