better install experience

Thu Oct 11 18:47:27 UTC 2007

On Thu, 11 Oct 2007, Christopher Brown wrote:
> On 11/10/2007, Szabolcs Szakacsits <szaka at ntfs-3g.org> wrote:
> > On 10/10/2007, Christopher Brown wrote:
> > >     On Wed, 2007-10-10 at 23:02 +0200, Thorsten Leemhuis wrote:
> > >
> > > >    There are two ntfs implementations. One is old, crufted, and poorly
> > > >    maintained.
> 
> Not sure what is to blame here but Thorsten didn't write that, Spot did.

Yep, my fault. Your white space indentation confuses my MUA.

> > > Sorry but that is bullshit. Old and crufted aren't very good technical
> >
> > As I mentioned previously, the kernel driver and ntfs-3g have the same
> > source base. When I developed ntfs-3g then I noted the potentially serious
> > problems in the kernel (e.g. in truncate). I also mentioned them to Dave
> > Jones. I never got a reply for any of my emails.
> 
> You're surprised by that?

To be honest, yes. Very much. We take bug reports, especially when 
potential corruption is involved, very seriously. We investigate and reply 
all of them and urgently fix it if needed, which is followed by a rapid 
stable release when the automtic tests pass.

As far as I know, but please correct me if I'm wrong, Dave Jones is 
(apparently was?) even paid to do this. So, some reply like "thanks, I'll 
take a quick look or forwarded it to X.Y" would have been appreciated.

So, why shouldn't one be surprised when a maintainer doesn't reply to bug 
reports he is responsible for? Please tell us, I'm really interested.

> I'm mad keen to see figures of enterprise installations running FUSE over
> kernel drivers. I mean _really_ keen.

Check out virtualization, security softwares, embedded devices, etc. More 
is coming to the market but obviously most companies prefer not to reveal 
what they use. FUSE is great invention to develop higher quality, more 
reliable and featureful software __faster__.

> > I've worked with him 4 years when it was decided finally a year ago 
> > that a partial fork is needed to ensure driver reliability and 
> > maintainability.
> 
> Partial? Could you define this? 

libntfs + ntfsmount, not the utilities. The utilities are being forked 
rigth now.

> Please remember that I was/am a member of the linux-ntfs project and 
> although my contribution was only in the package department for Rich 
> Russon when he was around, there was nothing to indicate you were 
> intending to fork. 

Then you didn't follow the linux-ntfs-dev discussions carefully.

> and even then there was no real reason given in your announcement that 
> you were doing it for the above purpose.

There were quite many reasons. 

> Whats wrong with bugging Linus to get it applied then? I'm having a hard
> time believe crucial fixes sit in cvs simply because someone wont write an
> email saying "Linus, please apply...". If Anton wont sign off (or comment)
> then I'm inclined to agree the driver is dead in the water but it doesn't
> look like this happened.

The release has nothing to do with Linus or the kernel. The maintainer 
could have make the release himself anytime in 10 minutes. He did now 
because finally somebody wrote the announcement and made him to do so. 

> It would probably benefit from having any post-fork detail removed. As it
> currently stands it might be interpreted that the reason for the fork was
> the the kernel driver was not going to be released until 2008. 

Of course that was also a very serious reason. 

> I'm still at a loss as to why you forked but then I was not privy to 
> conversations that went on behind the scenes perhaps.

There wasn't any privy behind the scenes. Or at least I wasn't involved in 
any. 

> >     Here is my original announcement:
> >
> > http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/message.php?msg_id=Pine.LNX.4.21.0607141859080.31588-100000%40mlf.linux.rulez.org
>
> The announcement came without warning - this is my issue. 

The announcement went to the __development__ list. The announcement was 
itself the warning. It was not a public announcement. Nobody does a warning 
before sending something the a devel list because the sending itself is the 
warning. 

> It would've been nice to have seen a "I'm thinking of forking because of 
> a, b, c etc. Can anything be done?". So yeah, I'm a little sad that the 
> project split and now confusion reigns.

You're also confusing two things here. The announcement was in the middle 
of July and the fork at the end of October when it became obvious things 
doesn't work out as they should.

> > It actually has nothing to do with the kernel driver.
> >
> > As I wrote, it has quite a lot, in fact.
> 
> Please stop editing the posts like this; it is really bad form. 

As soon as you stop indenting emails with white spaces, the MUAs will also 
quote it properly ;-)

> NTFS-3g is separate and distinct from the kernel driver. One is not 
> reliant on the other but perhaps you misunderstood me.

Could be. I'm not a native English speaker but a Hungarian one. For me this 
is not a question of belief but a very precisely "measurable" software 
engineering:

	http://ntfs-3g.org/quality.html#testmethods

> Please don't take this as criticism of ntfs-3g - I think it was a long time
> (too long) in coming and enables lots of interesting things to happen. Keep
> up the excellent work - I'm all in favour of choice which is what the
> original argument was all about.

Thanks,
	    Szaka

--
NTFS-3G Lead Developer:  http://ntfs-3g.org