Reiser4 - Evolution or Intelligent Design? [LWN.net]

Reiser4 - Evolution or Intelligent Design?

Posted Aug 7, 2006 5:51 UTC (Mon) by csawtell (subscriber, #986)
In reply to: Reiser4 - Evolution or Intelligent Design? by dlang
Parent article: Debating reiser4 - again

umm, the world has access to reiser4
In the strict sense of the word that's true, but in practise it's not true. To the best my knowledge none of the major distributions have a module for it in the install CDs.

what's being asked for is for the kernel maintaineers to accept responsibility for maintaining it forever (well, 10 years or so, effectively forever)
You mean like devfs was?
If Reiser4 turns out to be a bad-mutation just like devfs was, it can be removed, especially if it's marked as experimental until it's more proven.

there's no right to have anything accepted into the kernel,
True.

especially when it carries a substantial maintinance burden with it.
Does it, really? I don't think Hans Reiser and his team, have plans to walk off this mortal coil as soon Reiser4 is accepted into the mainline kernel. Note that Reiser4 works exceptionally well _right now_.

When making any technical decision, it's important to keep the mind clear of influences caused by personality differences, nationalistic feelings, or earlier misunderstandings.

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Removing coe from mainline

Posted Aug 7, 2006 15:58 UTC (Mon) by kpower (subscriber, #37136) [Link]

what's being asked for is for the kernel maintaineers to accept responsibility for maintaining it forever (well, 10 years or so, effectively forever)

You mean like devfs was? If Reiser4 turns out to be a bad-mutation just like devfs was, it can be removed, especially if it's marked as experimental until it's more proven.

When it was time to remove devfs, users were given two different upgrade paths: return to a static /dev, or use sysfs/udev In part this was possible because the kernel developers had the technical knowledge, expertise and experience with the code and problem in order to provide a solution. This despite the disappearance of the originator of devfs.

If it came time to remove reiserfs4 from the kernel, could the current or future kernel developers provide the same service to users of reiserfs4? That appears to be the motivation to have the reiserfs code comply with kernel code guidelines.

Labeling new code as experiemental obviously helps, as that indicates DO NOT USE IN PRODUCTION, but there comes a point when that label goes away. Sometimes it's not even applied initially. That is what the kernel developers reviews are attempting to address, just like most other projects have to.

Removing coe from mainline

Posted Aug 7, 2006 17:44 UTC (Mon) by job (guest, #670) [Link]

Backup, re-mkfs, restore. It's even easier than moving from devfs to
static /dev, where you have to make sure manually that all your nodes are
in place as all may be not be present at any given moment.