linux-ext4 - Re: [Patch 1/4] Support for checking and reading block grade information in kernel

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Date:   Sun, 29 Apr 2018 04:02:58 -0700
From:   Matthew Wilcox <willy@...radead.org>
To:     Sayan Ghosh <sgdgp.2014@...il.com>
Cc:     Jan Kara <jack@...e.cz>,
        Ext4 Developers List <linux-ext4@...r.kernel.org>,
        linux-fsdevel@...r.kernel.org,
        niloy ganguly <ganguly.niloy@...il.com>,
        "Bhattacharya, Suparna" <suparna.bhattacharya@....com>,
        Madhumita Mallick <madhu.cse.ju@...il.com>,
        "Bharde, Madhumita" <madhumita.bharde@....com>
Subject: Re: [Patch 1/4] Support for checking and reading block grade
 information in kernel

On Sun, Apr 29, 2018 at 03:22:34PM +0530, Sayan Ghosh wrote:
> Thank you for looking into our patchset and providing feedbacks.
> We are currently modifying these patches for the latest version of kernel.

It's probably a better use of your time to convince us that this is a
useful feature.

> The overall objective is described as follows :
> The goal of our project is broadly to support data gradation of a
> single file. If the contents of the file is graded in terms of its
> importance then a corresponding application might need to view/analyse
> only the important portions. It also helps if the important portions
> can be accessed quickly without having to go through the entire file.
> For an example, we can think of a leaning video with
> indexing/annotations, in which the annotations contain the important
> parts of the video. A learner can just be interested in those parts,
> and it will help him if he can be provided with a reduced view with
> just the parts he’s interested in. An example of such videos is ACM
> Webinar videos where an user can navigate using table-of-contents or
> phrase cloud.

The problem I have with this approach is that it assumes the author of
the video knows in advance which bits will be popular.  If there's a
part which becomes unexpectedly popular then you didn't win anything.

> We are also looking if there are any other in-built methods which can
> help in having the grade structure without introducing new data
> structures. We would be grateful if you also could provide suggestions
> on other ways of implementing grades.

You're getting ahead of yourself; the implementation of them inside an
individual filesystem is almost unimportant (it's important insofaras
it's good to demonstrate that it can be done).  The important part is the
API between the kernel and userspace, and convincing people to use it.
We don't want to merge an API that nobody ends up using.