Re: [PATCH 2/2] block: create ioctl to discard-or-zeroout a range of blocks

From: Linus Torvalds
Date: Tue Mar 15 2016 - 19:14:39 EST


On Tue, Mar 15, 2016 at 4:06 PM, Linus Torvalds
<torvalds@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> And yes, "keep the patch entirely inside google" is obviously one good
> way to limit the interface. But if there are really other groups that
> want to explore this, then that sounds like a pretty horrible model
> too.

Side note: I really don't see how your argument of "XFS has been able
to do something like this for over a decade, using an even uglier
trick that is hidden and not documented" is at all an argument for
your position.

You're saying "nobody else should be doing what I've been doing for a
long time", and backing that argument up with "but I don't document
it, and it's completely different because it's done at mkfs/debugfs
time rather than mount-time".

But now that people are talking about a filesystem-independent way of
doing the same thing, now it's suddenly poisonous.

Dave, I call BS on your arguments. Or maybe I misunderstood it. But it
does smell very "do what I say, not what I do".

Linus