Re: [RFC] The reflink(2) system call v4.

[Jamie Lokier <jamie@shareable.org>]

jim owens wrote:
> It passes the test that 99% of the time for any user (including
> root), "it just works the way I want it to".  In my experience,
> root and setuid programs really don't want to take ownership,
> they want to replicate it.

Unfortunately in the other 1%, as I've explained in detail in another
mail, it's a lot of work and sometimes impossible for a program to set
the attributes to be those of a new file.

Whereas an explicit choice between snapshot attributes and new-file
attributes never causes problems, because it's trivial to provide the
automatic "-p" switch by trying one then the other.

To human-optimise, make your reflink _program_ do that.
Humans don't call system calls themselves :-)

> The behavior matches "cp -p" or "tar -x"

Actually it doesn't, but even if it did, not having any way to turn
off the "-p" would be just as annoying as if you couldn't do that with "cp".

If you like root to have "cp -p", put it in /root/.bashrc :-)

-- Jamie