[Btrfs-devel] btrfs and git-reflog

[Chris Mason]

On Friday 25 January 2008, Theodore Tso wrote:
> On Fri, Jan 25, 2008 at 07:07:58PM +0100, Jan Engelhardt wrote:
> > There was a debate about whether telldir/seekdir should continue to be
> > supported at the kernel level (http://lkml.org/lkml/2007/4/7/107)
>
> That's not a good summary of the thread.
>
> I encourage folks to re-read the old LKML discussion, though.
>
> Basically, the problem with readdir off_t collisions are (1)
> telldir/seekdir, and (2) NFS.
>
> It's not really possible to emulate telldir/seekdir in userspace,
> unless you want glibc to suck in the *entire* directory (which in the
> case of a squid cache directory might potentially be megabtes or
> gigbytes of storage) all in one go.
>
> Nuking telldir() and seekdir() support entirely would be politically
> sensitive, but given that it's needed for NFS server support, and
> that's probably harder to make go away than old programs that used
> telldir()/seekdir(), no one has ever really been interested in pushing
> forward with a deprecation proposal for telldir()/seekdir() at a POSIX
> or SuS standards meeting.

Nod, in general I'm not trying to use btrfs to push interface changes....it is 
far too easy to drown in the details there when the real goal is new features 
at a higher level.

-chris