Re: metadata plugins (was Re: the " 'official' point of view" expressed by kernelnewbies.org regarding reiser4 inclusion)

[David Masover <ninja@slaphack.com>]

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Arjan van de Ven wrote:
>> Most users not only cannot patch a kernel, they don't know what a patch
>> is.  It most certainly does. 
> 
> 
> obviously you can provide complete kernels, including precompiled ones.
> Most distros have a yum or apt or similar tool to suck down packages,
> it's trivial for users to add a site to that, so you could provide
> packages if you want and make it easy for them.

What's more, many distros patch their kernels extensively.  They listen
to their users, too.  So if there are a lot of users wanting this to be
in the kernel, let them complain -- loudly -- to their distro to patch
for Reiser4.

It could be made even easier than that -- if Reiser4 is really so
self-contained, it could be a whole separate set of modules, distributed
on its own.  Most gamers have to be content with doing something similar
with the nvidia drivers -- for different reasons (licensing) but with
the same results.  I know Gentoo handles this automatically (emerge
nvidia-kernel).

Hmm, maybe it makes it a pain to have it as a root filesystem, so that
really needs distro support.  And yet, we have a whole system designed
specifically for being able to load modules and tweak settings before
the root FS is available.  It's called initrd, or more recently,
initramfs.  I use an old-style initrd on this box, because my root FS is
on an nvidia RAID, so I have to run a program called "dmraid" before I
mount my root FS -- it's really trivial for me to have Reiser4 as a
module, and I do, despite it being a root FS.

I suspect that, all technical, political, and "mine is bigger" arguments
aside, being available as a root FS of a distro, especially a default
FS, would go a long way towards inclusion in the kernel.  So all you
have to do is find a reasonably popular and friendly distro, with people
who are (for the moment) easier to deal with than kernel people.

Most people, if they even know what a filesystem or a kernel is, still
won't bother compiling their own kernel, you're right.  But that means
they are more likely to be using a distro-patched kernel than a stock,
vanilla one.

Is this enough to be "in the jukebox", Hans?

Of course, it's odd that I mention Gentoo, the Gentoo people (as a rule)
hate ReiserFS, but there are far more distros than there are popular
kernel forks.  I'm sure someone will be interested.

That's assuming that making further changes (putting stuff in the VFS)
is out of the question (for now).


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