Re: [PATCH 1/5] Forking ext4 filesystem from ext3 filesystem

[Jeff Garzik <jeff@garzik.org>]

Andrew Morton wrote:
> On Thu, 10 Aug 2006 09:41:59 -0700
> Mingming Cao <cmm@us.ibm.com> wrote:
>
> > Andrew Morton wrote:
> >
> > > On Wed, 09 Aug 2006 18:17:02 -0700
> > > Mingming Cao <cmm@us.ibm.com> wrote:
> > >
> > >
> > > > Fork(copy) ext4 filesystem from ext3 filesystem. Rename all functions in ext4 from ext3_xxx() to ext4_xxx().
> > >
> > > It would have been nice to spend a few hours cleaning up ext3 and JBD
> > > before doing this.  The code isn't toooo bad, but there are number of
> > > coding style problems, whitespace screwups, incorrect comments, missing
> > > comments, poorly-chosen variable names and all of that sort of thing.
> > >
> > > One the fs has been copied-and-pasted, it's much harder to address these
> > > things: either need to do it twice, or allow the filesystems to diverge, or
> > > not do it.
> > Andrew, thanks for taking a close look this series of changes.
> >
> > I agree with you that the timing is right, to do the clean up now rather 
> > than later. I would give it a try. If I could get more help from more 
> > code reviewer, it probably makes the effort a lot easier. For those 
> > issues you pointed out : coding style problem___incorrect comments, 
> > poorly-named variables  -- do you have any specific examples in your mind?
>
> Not really, apart from the few things I identified elsewhere (such as the
> brelse thing).
>
> It's just that now is the right time for a general spring-cleaning, if we
> ever want to do that.
>
> > > Also, -mm presently has two patches pending against fs/jbd/ and nine pending
> > > against fs/ext3/.  We should get all those things merged before taking the
> > > copy.
> > So probably the right thing to do is keep the ext4 patches against mm 
> > tree instead of rc three?
>
> That would drive everyone nuts, I think.  What I would suggest is:
>
> - get ext3 into a ready-to-copy state (merge bugfixes, spring-clean, etc)

Presumably bug fixes should go in immediately, regardless of whether 
it's before or after "cp -a ext3 ext4".

I strongly disagree that ext3 should be subject to a spring cleaning. 
Comments, whitespace, very very minor things, sure.  Trying to get rid 
of brelse() when _many_ other filesystems also use it?  ext4 material.

That detracts from the idea that its the stable counterpart to the devel 
filesystem (ext4).

	Jeff


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