Date: Wed, 26 Mar 2003 03:49:39 -0500 From: Donn Miller <dmmiller@cvzoom.net> To: David Schultz <dschultz@uclink.Berkeley.EDU> Cc: fs@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Why is there no JFS? Message-ID: <3E8169A3.7090309@cvzoom.net> References: <b2ejfe$1sl7$1@FreeBSD.csie.NCTU.edu.tw>
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David Schultz wrote: > Thus spake Daxbert <daxbert_news@dweebsoft.com>: >>If a JFS were to be ported and/or developed for FreeBSD >>what should it be based on? XFS, JFS, ReiserFS??? > > > It would be easier to add journalling to FFS than to port one of > the above filesystems, and the licensing would be problematic. It > is less problematic for ReiserFS because Hans Reiser is willing to > make exceptions to the GPL as long as e.g. Apple can't build OS X > on top of FreeBSD and thereby get ReiserFS without sharing the > profits with him. But you still have to find someone for whom > softupdates isn't good enough who is willing to do the work. Yes, that is true. But it's good to have various filesystems to choose from. I personally like UFS+ softupdates, because it's one filesystem that works very well. So, you're not left agonizing over which filesystem to use. Plus IMHO it greatly simplifies maintenance if there's only one filesystem, because all the effort is in maintaining that one particular filesystem, and not 3 or more others. Plus, problem reports would increase with an increase in filesystems. If other journalled filesystems were ported to FreeBSD, wouldn't that pose a maintenance headache? That would be one or more additional filesystems to maintain in addition to UFS+Softupdates. There's the potential for those additional filesystems to bitrot over time if they're neglected, much like what happened to LFS. On the positive side, journalling filesystems seem to be very hot and whatnot these days, and people are more likely to try FreeBSD if they hear it has the choice of some journalling filesystems. I personally think LFS would be the best choice as an alternative to UFS, but I haven't really looked into the technical aspects of LFS yet. And what about ReiserFS? The maintainer of that filesystem, assuming it were eventually ported to FreeBSD, would have to follow the ReiserFS development very closely for changes. All of the ReiserFS team are presently Linux kernel hackers, and probably don't know anything about FreeBSD kernel internals. Therefore, it could be difficult to track changes with the Reiser core team. And would the Reiser core team be willing to incorporate changes from a minority (FreeBSD) team? Those are the things to consider before even trying to port ReiserFS. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-fs" in the body of the message
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