default filesystem

[Christian Schaller]

I agree with Matthew here that if we are going with btrfs for the medium/long term, then
that has an impact on our decision for default filesystem in the short term. To me it
seems like switching to XFS for the workstation doesn't make sense if we still want to
get onto btrfs at some point. It just means we will find ourselves with our users
spread across one more filesystem medium/long term.

The harder question is to what degree we are able to trust in btrfs 'getting there'
within a given timeframe. On the other hand if Suse ships it then
we should at least be able to go to the limited feature version they use at some point.

Christian

----- Original Message -----
> From: "Matthew Miller" <mattdm at fedoraproject.org>
> To: "Discussions about development for the Fedora desktop" <desktop at lists.fedoraproject.org>
> Sent: Monday, March 3, 2014 2:35:09 PM
> Subject: Re: default filesystem
> 
> On Fri, Feb 28, 2014 at 08:34:26PM -0500, Josh Boyer wrote:
> > > btrfs is still where we really want to go, I kind of think we should
> > > avoid
> > > the churn of swapping in one similar thing for another. (Since RHEL7 has
> > > already forked, that ship has sailed.) We talked about having btrfs/xfs
> > > filesystem talks at Flock -- is waiting until then too late to decide?
> > Are we really going to repeat the whole conversation we already had
> > around this earlier in the week?
> [...]
> > So.  I'd like to crap or get off the pot now.  This is supposedly due
> > Monday, but every time someone insists I revisit it, it's going to
> > take that much longer.  Do you have something new we've missed?
> 
> I did read all of that, and sorry if I'm being obtuse. I think it really
> makes a difference if we still intend for btrfs to be the default in the
> medium term (not just in hopeful thinking). If that is the case for
> workstation but server still wants XFS even then, there doesn't seem to be
> any point in bothering with consistency now since it won't be consistent in
> a little bit anyway. On the other hand, if server does want to go with btrfs
> and relatively soon, and again if consistency is important, I'd like to push
> back on *server's* decision.
> 
> Or in matrix form:
> 
> 
>                   Consistency         Consistency
>                   Valuable          Not Important
>            +---------------------------------------------+
> Btrfs      | All products should | Workstation should    |
> actually   | stay with ext4      | probably stay ext4;   |
> ready soon |                     | cloud definitely will |
>            |                     |                       |
>            +---------------------+-----------------------+
>            | All products should | Whatever              |
> Btrfs more | switch to XFS       |                       |
> than 3*    |                     |                       |
> years out  |                     |                       |
>            +---------------------------------------------
> 
> 
> * where "3" is an arbitrary number higher than 2; exact value tbd
> 
> --
> Matthew Miller    --   Fedora Project    --    <mattdm at fedoraproject.org>
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