Widening ext4's readdir() cookie

If you make the IDs stable, so they never change so long as the entry exists, then the problem is gone. The IDs are stable, and so the ordering between them is stable. You can do this through an additional index (in the data-structure sense).

The "pain" seems to be that the ext3+ devs are trying to achieve this stable order by hacking around in the details an existing index of an ID that does NOT have an absolute order (the hashes of names). That wouldn't be necessary at all if they'd just add an additional stable, absolutely ordered, finite ID with its own index. The namespace-hash and the finite-ID could each have their own, simple index - no nasty hacks needed.

(It seems to me, but I could be dreadfully wrong, or perhaps there are some critical details missing from the reporting ;) ).