EXT4 File-System Updates For The Linux 3.14 Kernel

[phoronix]

Phoronix: EXT4 File-System Updates For The Linux 3.14 Kernel

The EXT4 file-system pull request has been submitted for the Linux 3.14 kernel merge window...

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=MTU4NTM

[You-]

Optimistic

The optimistic view is that this file system doesnt need much tampering with and any changes will be small and to fix bugs and increase stability.

I doubt anyone will be disapointed with the changes.

(If on the other hand there are larger changes queued that were not ready, a list of them would be nice)

[Guest]

The optimistic view is that this file system doesnt need much tampering with and any changes will be small and to fix bugs and increase stability.

I doubt anyone will be disapointed with the changes.

"Those hoping for exciting EXT4 updates in Linux 3.14 will sadly be disappointed"

I'm not disappointed. From my POV Ext5 development should be started a while ago. But on the other hand XFS also adds some new features and large cleanups/code improvements.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SMcVdZk7wV8

[Ericg]

"Those hoping for exciting EXT4 updates in Linux 3.14 will sadly be disappointed"

I'm not disappointed. From my POV Ext5 development should be started a while ago. But on the other hand XFS also adds some new features and large cleanups/code improvements.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SMcVdZk7wV8

Ext4 wasn't even supposed to have caught on as much as it did, it was -supposed- to just be a stopgap for Btrfs, but we all see how that worked out. If there is news of Ext5 it'll probably be something along the lines of "We're keeping the name... scrapping everything else." whereas I think Ext3 -> Ext4 started off as a few breaking changes and then gradually grew into more. I don't think it was ever done as a re-imagining and re-architecture'ing of the filesystem

[mibo]

Give me ext4 snapshots

I'm still waiting for the snapshot feature.
Wasn't it mentioned here some years ago? And still didn't show up in the kernel :-(

[Guest]

Ext4 wasn't even supposed to have caught on as much as it did, it was -supposed- to just be a stopgap for Btrfs, but we all see how that worked out.

Yes, I'm aware of it.

If there is news of Ext5 it'll probably be something along the lines of "We're keeping the name... scrapping everything else." whereas I think Ext3 -> Ext4 started off as a few breaking changes and then gradually grew into more. I don't think it was ever done as a re-imagining and re-architecture'ing of the filesystem

I don't think that Ext5 should be something radical new. I think that it would be a good think to stop adding features to Ext4 in 2009 and starting development of Ext5.

Now in 2014 Ext4 is still under some development and a lot of people consider it as stable. I don't see a large difference here between Ext4 and Btrfs.

[chrisq]

Now in 2014 Ext4 is still under some development and a lot of people consider it as stable. I don't see a large difference here between Ext4 and Btrfs.

You don't see a difference in stability or you don't see the technical difference?
In any case, that's pretty amazing, please explain!

[Ericg]

I don't think that Ext5 should be something radical new.

To clarify, I wasn't saying that it SHOULD be radically new, I just said that it was what I was EXPECTING to happen, but hey, i could wrong.

[Guest]

You don't see a difference in stability or you don't see the technical difference?
In any case, that's pretty amazing, please explain!

I don't see any difference in development rate of both file systems, so I'm surprised that Ext4 is considered as stable and Btrfs as unstable.

I tracked some kernel stats until 3.5:
1 - kernel version
2 - ext4 + jbd2 insertions
3 - ext4 + jbd2 deletions
4 - btrfs insertions
5 - btrfs deletions


29 2311 1376 43705 0
30 1296 686 4406 2650
31 3473 1925 9209 2893
32 1967 1339 4291 2469
33 1051 776 1332 1041
34 1320 726 1374 465
35 1150 853 5230 2863
36 978 698 39 33
37 2300 1084 3104 701
38 807 505 3475 984
39 615 452 2115 1236
3,0 2151 1259 7509 5219
3,1 2341 2125 1765 1707
3,2 2370 1269 6346 2041
3,3 1110 506 7172 1219
3,4 1679 1684 4597 2411
3,5 1787 243 3354 1099

Stats are not updated, but I don't think that it changed much. Ext4 is still under development.