linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH 2/2] block: create ioctl to discard-or-zeroout a range of blocks

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Date:	Tue, 15 Mar 2016 17:06:00 -0700
From:	Linus Torvalds <torvalds@...ux-foundation.org>
To:	Dave Chinner <david@...morbit.com>
Cc:	"Theodore Ts'o" <tytso@....edu>, Ric Wheeler <rwheeler@...hat.com>,
	Andy Lutomirski <luto@...capital.net>,
	One Thousand Gnomes <gnomes@...rguk.ukuu.org.uk>,
	Gregory Farnum <greg@...gs42.com>,
	"Martin K. Petersen" <martin.petersen@...cle.com>,
	Christoph Hellwig <hch@...radead.org>,
	"Darrick J. Wong" <darrick.wong@...cle.com>,
	Jens Axboe <axboe@...nel.dk>,
	Andrew Morton <akpm@...ux-foundation.org>,
	Linux API <linux-api@...r.kernel.org>,
	Linux Kernel Mailing List <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>,
	shane.seymour@....com, Bruce Fields <bfields@...ldses.org>,
	linux-fsdevel <linux-fsdevel@...r.kernel.org>,
	Jeff Layton <jlayton@...chiereds.net>,
	Eric Sandeen <esandeen@...hat.com>
Subject: Re: [PATCH 2/2] block: create ioctl to discard-or-zeroout a range of blocks

On Tue, Mar 15, 2016 at 4:52 PM, Dave Chinner <david@...morbit.com> wrote:
>
> It is pretty clear that the onus is on the patch submitter to
> provide justification for inclusion, not for the reviewer/Maintainer
> to have to prove that the solution is unworkable.

I agree, but quite frankly, performance is a good justification.

So if Ted can give performance numbers, that's justification enough.
We've certainly taken changes with less.

And with your "we should _not_ do this" argument, the onus is clearly on you.

> "Google uses this" is not sufficient justification.

Not per se, no, but it's a very traditional and time-honored model for
"should we merge this".

It's traditionally been things like "Redhat merged it in their distro
kernel, because they have customers that want/need it". That is *the*
reason many big projects got merged, ranging from filesystems to
drivers etc. Take reiserfs, for example: it got merged because SuSE
was actively using it.

So "this feature is being used in real life" is a big hint that the
standard upstream kernel may be missing something important. People
arguing against things like that has been a big problem in the past.
It took people _years_ to get over the whole Android thing. We need to
merge stuff that people are using and depend on, because _not_ merging
them just causes more and more distance between peoples kernels, and
makes it even harder to merge in the future.

I do agree that we want to have hard numbers.

And I do think that we should strive for the whole "we want to merge"
phase to be a time when we also look at "can we improve the
interfaces". But that can - and often does - go too far. Again, we had
_years_ of pointless masturbation over the whole Android thing, just
because people were making up new interfaces.

               Linus