Message-ID: <417C0520.8020807@slaphack.com>
Date: Sun, 24 Oct 2004 14:40:16 -0500
From: David Masover <ninja@slaphack.com>
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To: Hans Reiser <reiser@namesys.com>
CC: =?ISO-8859-1?Q?Markus_T=F6rnqvist?= <mjt@nysv.org>,
       linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, reiserfs-list@namesys.com
Subject: Re: 2.6.9-mm1
References: <20041023165712.GR26192@nysv.org> <417B1574.4090406@slaphack.com> <417B3A34.2060306@namesys.com>
In-Reply-To: <417B3A34.2060306@namesys.com>
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Hans Reiser wrote:
| David Masover wrote:
|
|>
|> Some people don't care about speed but need space.  I'd leave them in on
|> general principle, even if no one wants them now.
|
|
| Software design is usually improved by identifying features that aren't
| worth much, and removing them from the interface and burying them where
| average users don't see them (or dumping them completely).  Interface
| clutter has a cost.

Clutter, yes.  A tree-like structure can help things, and menuconfig
allows that.

That said, I don't object to hiding it in a header file, but I can
easily imagine a situation where someone would want small keys -- a very
small filesystem (flash ROM) with lots of metadata stored in a rather
deep tree without much fanout (am I using these terms properly?).  I
doubt much speed is gained by having large keys in such a situation, but
for storage space, every byte counts.

Now, the reiser4 code seems quite large compared to the space saved, but
suppose the user had chosen it already for other reasons (metadata,
space saved with cryptocompress plugin).  If reiser4 was going to be
used for any storage at all in such a situation, the user would much
rather use it for all storage than write a storage layer on top of it.
The inclusion of a (even stripped down) libdb might be the proverbial
straw that broke the camel's back.

It's possible that we will never see such a situation, but embedded
Linux is quite popular these days.
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