From owner-freebsd-current Wed Apr 19 11:20:52 2000 Delivered-To: freebsd-current@freebsd.org Received: from mail.rpi.edu (mail.rpi.edu [128.113.100.7]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id A739637BD29; Wed, 19 Apr 2000 11:20:45 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from drosih@rpi.edu) Received: from [128.113.24.47] (gilead.acs.rpi.edu [128.113.24.47]) by mail.rpi.edu (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id OAA402004; Wed, 19 Apr 2000 14:20:37 -0400 Mime-Version: 1.0 X-Sender: drosih@mail.rpi.edu Message-Id: In-Reply-To: References: Date: Wed, 19 Apr 2000 14:20:05 -0400 To: Robert Watson , committers@FreeBSD.ORG From: Garance A Drosihn Subject: Re: Recent commit changes extattr backing file format, users beware Cc: current@FreeBSD.ORG Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" Sender: owner-freebsd-current@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG At 3:41 AM -0400 4/19/00, Robert Watson wrote: >I hope not to change the format any further. I've been considering >introducing a backing file header version number of some sort, but >this is only necessary if we think the backing file format will >change much more. > >Comments welcome. If you're going to change the header right now, then I would think it is best to add a field for version number. What you're saying is that "we will never ever have to change this format again", and that seems overly optimistic to me. I don't even know what this *IS*, other than you report that this change will cause "weird and unfortunate things to happen" for backing files created with the previous format. Any format where a change can cause "weird and unfortunate things to happen" should have a version number in it, in my opinion... What downside is there to adding a field for version number? --- Garance Alistair Drosehn = gad@eclipse.acs.rpi.edu Senior Systems Programmer or drosih@rpi.edu Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-current" in the body of the message