Re: reiser4 plugins

[David Masover <ninja@slaphack.com>]

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Horst von Brand wrote:
> David Masover <ninja@slaphack.com> wrote:
> 
>>Hans Reiser wrote:
>>
>>>Jeff Garzik wrote:
> 
> 
> [...]
> 
> 
>>>You missed his point.  He is saying ext3 code should migrate towards
>>>becoming reiser4 plugins, and reiser4 should be merged now so that the
>>>migration can get started.
> 
> 
>>Sort of.
>>
>>I think ext3 would be nice as a reiser4 plugin.
> 
> 
> What for? It works just fine as it stands, AFAICS.

So does DOS.  Do you use DOS?  I don't even use DOS to run DOS programs.

"Ain't broke" is the battle cry of stagnation.

But, there are some things Reiser does better and faster than ext3, even
if you don't count file-as-directory and other toys.  There's nothing
ext3 does better than Reiser, unless you count the compatibility with
random bootloaders and low-level tools.

>>                                                Not everyone will want
>>to reformat at once, but as the reiser4 code matures and proves itself
>>(even more than it already has),
> 
> 
> I for one have seen mainly people with wild claims that it will make their
> machines much faster, and coming back later asking how they can recover
> their thrashed partitions...

You know how many I've had thrashed on Reiser4?  Two.  The first one was
with a VERY early alpha/beta, and the second one was when I dropped a
laptop and the disk failed.

And it does make certain things faster.  For one thing, "emerge sync" on
Gentoo is twice to four times as fast, and /usr/portage is 75% as big,
as on ReiserFS (3).

>>                                 the ext3 people may find themselves
>>wanting some of the more generic optimizations.
> 
> 
> They'll filch them in due time, don't worry.

Duplication of effort.  With plugins, we can optimize the upper layers
of ALL filesystems, regardless of the lower layers, in such a way that
it is optional.  I'm sure it's far easier to write a Reiser storage
plugin than a brand new FS.

Eventually, once competition is only based on storage format, we could
end up with just one format.  Just one filesystem!  (except for
fat/ntfs/iso/udf/network...)  And in the open source world, sometimes a
single product is a good thing.

>>But, I don't think that will realistically happen at all.
>>
>>Instead, what will probably happen is that once Reiser4 is in the
>>mainstream kernel, it will become more popular and noticable.  Other
>>FSes will take note.  ext3 people may decide they want
>>file-as-directory,
> 
> 
> That idea is even much older than Linux itself, and no other (Unix)
> filesystem has implemented it. Ever. Wonder why...
> 
> 
>>                   and vfat people may decide they want cryptocompress,
> 
> 
> I'm sure they don't, because it is mostly for Windows and assorted devices
> (pendrives, digital cameras, ...) compatibility.

I, for one, would like to use a pendrive and have certain files be
encrypted transparently, only for use on Linux, but others be ready to
transfer to a Windows box.

>>Eventually, with all the features ported, we end up with a situation
>>where there may be no meaningful difference between a filesystem and a
>>low-level reiser4 plugin.
> 
> 
> Could very well take decades, if ever.

How would you do it, in a way that doesn't take decades?
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