[xen-tools-dev] Filesystems and your project goals

[Stéphane Jourdois]

Hi,

I have some thoughts about filesystems creation (one of TODO items) :

1) the trailing space is gone in my trees, don't know why it was there 
in the first place, as mkfs.xfs doesn't need this "-d name=" option in 
my tests.

2) Moving make_fs_* options to conf is not as trivial as it could be, as 
we still have to name each filesystem. Adding a filesystem implies to 
modify the script and the conf, I would love a solution where only the 
conf has to be modified.

3) I can't find a generic enough tool to create any filesystem. Do you 
think using parted would be a good idea (one more dependency...) ?

4) I'm not sure this is necessary/wanted for a 4.2 release. xen-tools is 
primarily for production use (please correct me if needed), where you 
don't use fancy filesystems anyway. btrfs should be added though.

Now some timeline questions :

1) Is your goal to release 4.2 any time soon ?

2) Should we stick to first TODO items ?

3) Would you mind moving this filesystem item in 4.3 release goals ?

4) I really think that Steve's aborted move to Xen::Tools was a 
necessary step in the project as it would provide a lot benefits :
  - _really_ improve testing (as in 'make test'), as we can then test 
each perl function provided by the modules, and test functionalities, 
not only code styling issues,
  - Permit a lot of code refactoring,
  - Permit use of xen-tools in other frontends (as in a cute web page),
  - Simplify code modification (4333 lines for xen-create-image...),
  - Only implies non-visible changes, so no changes in the frontend, no 
compat issues,
  - Last but not least, that is the current /perl way of doing things/, 
and adding those modules to perl CPAN would provide a great visibility 
for your project.

Now, I am willing to implement this step, but only of course if you want 
me to do it. I estimate the work needed for about a couple of weeks. I 
imagine you'd want to release 4.2 before and then do this move for a 
5.0+ release.


/me going to do some research about locales configuration in each 
supported distribution, now :-)


++
Stéphane.

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