For this weeks meeting agenda...

[Bryan J. Smith]

On Mon, 2005-09-12 at 09:20 +0530, Rahul Sundaram wrote:
> If you are willing to take up the initiative to get other filesystem 
> supported then send in a mail to fedora-devel with your detailed 
> proposal.

I'll discuss this over on the XFS list.  I need to get a better feel on
what they believe would be required involvement on the Fedora end.  But
I know it's going to bring up some old history and/or bad tastes.

> Red Hat is certainly biased towards ext3 since Red Hat has the 
> necessary expertise to support it and enhance it as required as opposed 
> to other filesystems.

And I'm telling you until Red Hat puts forth the interest to see XFS as
"the complement" to Ext3 it really needs, then it matters really little.
Which is why I've been trying to see Red Hat get serious about its
future by putting forth the effort to integrate XFS formally.

Especially when there were 2-4 years ago, as there are even some still
now, various things that XFS supports that Ext3 does not.  And no, I'm
not talking about "speed" or other "performance" non-sense.  I'm talking
about enterprise features -- like on-line user-space tools, etc...

> The only difference in relationship with Fedora is 
> that the community can participate and take over maintenance other 
> filesystems and things that Red Hat isnt able to allocate resources 
> towards.

Then _that's_ what needs to be said -- that Red Hat isn't able to
allocate resources towards a 2nd filesystem.  I'd more than accept that.

But anyone who knows anything about the histories of both Ext3 and XFS
on Linux -- especially those of us who have deployed both over the years
-- do _not_ accept the oblivious "XFS doesn't do anything Ext3 can" non-
sense.

It's an argument that _is_ valid against ReiserFS and JFS for Fedora/Red
Hat's focus that also gets, quite inaccurately, applied against XFS.

> I dont see Fedora myths page talking about feature comparisons 
> for precisely this reason

It's not about "features."

It's about things like lack of EA support which makes it impossible for
ReiserFS and JFS to support SELinux, various history of kernel NFS,
quote and other "standard" kernel interface/support issues with ReiserFS
and JFS, etc...  Things that are _core_ to Fedora Core/Red Hat releases
that are "show stoppers."

But things that are _not_ true in the case of XFS.


-- 
Bryan J. Smith     b.j.smith at ieee.org     http://thebs413.blogspot.com
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