Re: [GIT PULL] Ext3 removal, quota & udf fixes

[Linus Torvalds]

On Mon, Aug 31, 2015 at 3:31 PM, Raymond Jennings <shentino@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> That said, I wouldn't mind myself if the ext4 driver were given a very
> grueling regression test to make sure it can actually handle old ext3
> systems as well as the ext3 driver can.

That's not my only worry. Things like "can you go back to ext3-only"
is an issue too - I don't think that's been a big priority for ext4
any more, and if there are any existing hold-outs that still use ext3,
they may want to be able to go back to old kernels.

So it's not just a "you can use ext4 instead" issue. Can you do that
*without* then forcing an upgrade forever on that partition? I'm not
sure the ext4 people are really even willing to guarantee that kind of
backwards compatibility.

I could be ok with removing ext3 in theory, but I haven't seen a lot
of rationale for it, and I don't know if there are still users who may
have their own good reasons to stay with ext3. Maybe there has been
lots of discussion about this on fsdevel (which I don't follow), and
I'm just lacking the background, but if so I want to see that
background. Not just a oneliner description that basically says
"remove ext3 support".

                    Linus
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