On Mon, May 21, 2007 at 01:36:38PM +0200, Jaroslaw Swierczynski wrote: > 2007/5/21, Attila <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > > > > I'm not a dev but from my view it doesn't make sense that because if the > > devs > > don't use reiser4 than they can't guarantee that it runs stable. A > > filesystem > > is too important to include only the patch and see if it compiles. And > > making > > own tests costs very much time. > > I doubt the devs test every single filesystem and every single feature > available in the kernel. > No, but they're heavily tested upstream, and most major ones are tested, just through use, eg jfs, xfs, ext3, reiserfs.
Adding reiser4 adds an extra responsibility. reiser4 despite claims, is not perfectly stable, once in a while bad patches come out, and broken releases are made. Namesys were in my experience, absolutely terrible at releasing patches for vanilla kernels on time. Often coming weeks, after a kernel release. And once or twice they put a bad patch up. This add's a lot of work for us. If namesys don't put the patch up, then we need to backport from -mm, and that adds it's own problems. As I said in my other mail, just because reiser4 doesnt change the code of other parts of the kernel, doesnt meant it doesnt interact with it. The kernel coding style standards aren't just there to make the code pretty and look the same. They're there to enforce standard ways of doing things, and proper methods that won't interfere with other things. Reiser4 simply, and badly violates these. It's not a 'small' issue. It's not aesthetic. "Because people want it" is not sufficient reason to include it. Especialy since the situation is opposite, there is no demand for it. There have been 0 feature requests on flyspray for reiser4 to be added to the vanilla kernel, and 0 discussions that I know of elsewhere. People must have a very odd way of telling us they want it. Reiser4's maintainability is in question. It's a big new filesystem, that only a limited number of developers understand well. I could count them on one hand. Maintainability is an important factor for merging anything -- if something cannot be properly maintained, you get code rot, and bugs. Given it's low number of developers, and the fate of Hans is seemingly unknown, maintainability is looking pretty crap for reiser4 to ever be merged to vanilla. Arch's kernel has long been a fairly minimally patched one. Recently, that's changed somewhat, though i'd say the upstream kernel devs are to blame, they're releasing more and more unstable kernels than they used to. The patches are needed to maintain some semblence of stability. The only features we add currently are unionfs, and squashfs. Both of which are to be used for liveCD's and future Arch projects. Both could not be maintained externally due to technical reasons. Reiser4 is not a bugfix, and is not required for any current/future projects. Lastly, the slippery slope. If we include reiser4, what argument do we have against including suspend2, fbsplash, and countless other patches? Many of which happen to be far more popular than reiser4. Reiser4 will not be in the Arch standard kernel, until it's merged to the vanilla kernel. James _______________________________________________ arch mailing list [email protected] http://archlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/arch
