Date: Wed, 16 Jan 2008 18:09:42 -0600 From: "Rick C. Petty" <rick-freebsd@kiwi-computer.com> To: Jeffrey Hutzelman <jhutz@cmu.edu> Cc: rra@stanford.edu, port-freebsd@openafs.org, freebsd-fs@FreeBSD.org, Robert Watson <rwatson@FreeBSD.org>, matt@linuxbox.com, freebsd-afs@FreeBSD.org, "Jason C. Wells" <jcw@highperformance.net>, openafs-devel@openafs.org Subject: Re: [OpenAFS-devel] Re: AFS ... or equivalent ... Message-ID: <20080117000942.GA54906@keira.kiwi-computer.com> In-Reply-To: <876FB8E38251C27B14CCCA29@atlantis.pc.cs.cmu.edu> References: <18CC5A4A2AC36D7FF57615EE@ganymede.hub.org> <478AF6BC.8050604@highperformance.net> <20080114142124.Y55696@fledge.watson.org> <876FB8E38251C27B14CCCA29@atlantis.pc.cs.cmu.edu>
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On Wed, Jan 16, 2008 at 01:48:52PM -0500, Jeffrey Hutzelman wrote: > --On Monday, January 14, 2008 02:23:47 PM +0000 Robert Watson > <rwatson@FreeBSD.org> wrote: > > >I'd like very much to get at least the kernel parts of an AFS client into > >the base system. > That may well be realistic for arla, though I believe there was a period > for a while where the kernel/arlad interface was evolving to support > features like chunking. I pay only superficial attention to arla-drinkers, > so I don't know what the status of any of that is; for that, you'd have to > ask someone who is actively involved in arla development (I believe there > are some such people on this list). > > It is unlikely ever to happen for OpenAFS, in which virtually all of the > cache manager code is in-kernel and most of it is cross-platform. Trying > to pull the OpenAFS cache manager into the FreeBSD kernel would be > equivalent to forking OpenAFS; what you'd get would work and would keep up > with FreeBSD, but it would be unlikely to keep up with OpenAFS. > > The "let's just slurp everything into the main distribution so we don't > have to worry about stable interfaces" approach is really poor. It > encourages bad engineering practice among people maintaining the main > distribution, discourages innovation and extension by others, and generally > doesn't scale. It's far better to either attempt to maintain stable > external interfaces to the VFS and VM subsystems, or else admit that you > don't have the resources to do so given the relatively small number of > external users, in which case you almost certainly also don't have the > resources to keep on top of updates to something like OpenAFS. > > In the long run, I'm guessing that the OpenAFS cache manager evolves more > quickly than FreeBSD's VFS interface, which makes pulling the CM into the > kernel tree a losing battle. If you disagree, by all means fork that part > of AFS (or get someone else to do so) and see what happens (AFS's > user/kernel and RPC interfaces are both fairly stable, so forking just the > kernel parts should be mostly feasible). > > -- Jeff > _______________________________________________ > freebsd-fs@freebsd.org mailing list > http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-fs > To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-fs-unsubscribe@freebsd.org" -- -- Rick C. Petty
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