Thanks for the response, but you talked around my two main questions
without addressing them. Chris asked to "state it clearly" so I put my
main questions after
the ===>. I've reposted that initial reply in full, and then I responded
to your specific comments.
I have no problems with BTRFS being available in Fedora for people to use.
I have a huge problem with us making it the default... even for a subset of
users. Making something default should be a huge lift, especially when
we're talking about a file system. At a bare minimum there needs to be at
least 1 production release of BTRFS and you need to explain fully the
Redhat question. The onus is on the people proposing the change, not the
other way around.
On Sat, Jun 27, 2020 at 5:04 PM Chris Murphy <lists(a)colorremedies.com>
wrote:
But if you can state clearly why it isn't persuasive in a way anyone
could possibly answer, I'm sure someone will try. And it would help
improve the proposal.
Making something the default is a high bar to clear. There needs to be a
compelling reason why? The things listed in the proposal may be nice for
some people, but the uninformed masses don't care. Further complicating
the matter is that Redhat deprecated BTRFS. That to me raises a big red
flag that needs to be addressed.
===> You need to clearly identify what gave Redhat heartburn and identify
what has changed to make you believe those issues have been addressed.
Another thing that is particularly troubling is I can't find where it is
stated that there is a production release of BTRFS. I've seen statements
that it is "testing in production" - whatever that means... and that it has
been deployed on "millions of servers" - but the only statement as to code
stability just says that "The Btrfs code base is under heavy development."
I can't find an official statement from the project that there has ever
been a production release. This is concerning to me because when I
reported problems in the past I was told basically, "silly you... BTRFS
should only be used in non-critical systems - if you're concerned about
stability you shouldn't be running it."
===> If we are considering BTRFS as a default, at a bare minimum there
should be an official production release from the project.
On Sun, Jun 28, 2020 at 6:31 AM Michael Catanzaro <mcatanzaro(a)gnome.org>
wrote:
On Sat, Jun 27, 2020 at 6:25 pm, Gerald B. Cox <gbcox(a)bzb.us>
wrote:
> Making something the default is a high bar to clear. There needs to
> be a compelling reason why? The things listed in the proposal may be
> nice for some people, but the uninformed masses don't care.
There is a large list of benefits, listed at
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Changes/BtrfsByDefault#Benefit_to_Fedora.
...
That doesn't really address my point that most people don't care,
especially those in the supposedly narrow range it is claimed is the target
for this change. Additionally, Redhat claimed in 2017: "In the meantime,
many of the features that btrfs provides are now available via other more
mature and stable storage technologies like ext4, XFS, LVM, etc. We've put
considerable effort into improving these technologies to the point where
current Red Hat offerings already cover almost the entire btrfs feature
set."
Again, the elephant in the room is:
===> You need to clearly identify what gave Redhat heartburn and identify
what has changed to make you believe those issues have been addressed.
> Another thing that is particularly troubling is I can't find where it
> is stated that there is a production release of BTRFS. I've seen
> statements that it is "testing in production" - whatever that
> means... and that it has been deployed on "millions of servers" - but
> the only statement as to code stability just says that "The Btrfs
> code base is under heavy development." I can't find an official
> statement from the project that there has ever been a production
> release. This is concerning to me because when I reported problems in
> the past I was told basically, "silly you... BTRFS should only be
> used in non-critical systems - if you're concerned about stability
> you shouldn't be running it."
Josef has provided numerous statements in this thread regarding general
stability. See
https://btrfs.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/Status for a
detailed breakdown.
And? I don't know about you, when dealing with file systems a chart with
OK, Mostly OK and Unstable doesn't give me the warm and fuzzies.
Especially when OK is defined as: "should be safe to use, no known major
defficiencies" . "Should" raises a red flag with me, especially given the
history of BTRFS. Again, if we're going to be making something the
DEFAULT, it should have at least 1 production release. Where is it? I
haven't been able to find one and I've asked multiple people and the
response has always ducked the issue or been crickets.