Re: Horrible ftruncate performance

[Chris Mason <mason@suse.com>]

On Tue, 2003-07-22 at 14:09, Hans Reiser wrote:

> >It's important to remember that releasing v4 doesn't automatically
> >convert all existing v3 users to it.  This is the kind of thing we
> >should try to fix without making major design changes to v3.  It's at
> >least worth talking about, "use v4" can't always be the answer.
> >
> V3 is in feature freeze.   Unfortunately, determining what is a feature 
> and what is a bug is a process based not just on the user experience, 
> but on the structure of the code.  The proper fix for this bug is to add 
> a feature called extents.   This  belongs in, and is in, V4.  V4 will be 
> available very soon.
> 
> Adding features, like new kinds of items, will disturb the stability of 
> V3.  V3 needs to be zero defect.  It is now in a phase in its lifetime 
> where conservatism is appropriate.
> 

Heh, everything needs to be zero defect ;-)  But I completely agree
about not adding new item types or other format changes.  Still,
non-extent filesystems can create holes faster than we can, so it is
worth talking about ways to fix it (within the constraints of existing
code).

-chris