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SubjectRe: [PATCH 0/7] overlay filesystem: request for inclusion
Date
Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org> writes:

>> > Well, these things have been around for over 20 years. What motivated
>> > the developers of other OS's to develop these things and how are their
>> > users using them?
>>
>> That's a good question, Erez might be able to answer that better.
>>
>> We have customers who need this for the "common base + writable
>> configuration" case in a virtualized environment.
>>
>> Since overlayfs's announcement several projects have tried it and have
>> been very good testers and bug reporters. These include OpenWRT, Ubuntu
>> and other Debian based live systems.
>
> I assume that the live CD was your motivator for developing overlayfs?

Actually no. The main motivator was that I started reviewing
union-mounts and got thinking about how to do it better.

>> > Another issue: there have been numerous attempts at Linux overlay
>> > filesystems from numerous parties. Does (or will) this implementation
>> > satisfy all their requirements?
>>
>> Overlayfs aims to be the simplest possible but not simpler.
>>
>> I think the reason why "aufs" never had a real chance at getting merged
>> is because of feature creep.
>>
>> Of course I expect new features to be added to overlayfs after the
>> merge, but I beleive some of the features in those other solutions are
>> simply unnecessary.
>
> This is my main worry. If overlayfs doesn't appreciably decrease the
> motivation to merge other unioned filesystems then we might end up with
> two similar-looking things. And, I assume, the later and more
> fully-blown implementation might make overlayfs obsolete but by that
> time it will be hard to remove.
>
> So it would be interesting to hear the thoughts of the people who have
> been working on the other implementations.

Added J. R. Okajima (aufs maintainer) to CC.

Thanks,
Miklos


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