Messages in this thread | | | From | "Hua Zhong" <> | Subject | RE: Linux 2.6.29 | Date | Fri, 27 Mar 2009 11:36:07 -0700 |
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Why are we even arguing about standards?
POSIX, as all other standards, is a common _denominator_ and absolutely the _minimal_ requirement for a compliant operating system. It does not tell you how to design the best systems in the real world. For God's sake, can't we aim for something higher than a piece of literature written some 20 years ago? And stop making excuses please?
The fact is, most software is crap, and most software developers are lazy and stupid. Same as most customers are stupid too. A technically correct operating system isn't necessarily the most successful and accepted operating system. Have a sense of pragmatism if you are developing something that is not just a fancy research project.
And it's especially true for ext4. I bet nobody would care about what it did if it called itself bloody-fast-next-gen-fs, and of course probably nobody would use it either. But since it's putting the "ext" and "next default Linux filesystem in all distros" hat on, it'd better take both the glory and the crap with it. So, no matter whether ext3 made some mistakes, you can't just throw it all away while keeping its name to give people the false sense of comfort.
I am really glad that Theodore changed ext4 to handle the common practice of truncate/rename sequences. It's absolutely necessary. It's not a "favor for stupid user space", but a mandatory requirement if you even remotely want it to be a general-purpose file system. In the end, it doesn't matter how standard compliant you are - people will only choose the filesystem that is the most reliable, fastest, and works with the most number of applications.
Hua
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