[ext2resize] new release needs cutting and the future of ext[23]*

[Brian J. M. <b20...@in...>]

Hello all.

I just had to make a new ext2resize from CVS because the 1.1.17 that's
shipping with my vendor's distro doesn't support some of ext2/3's
newer features.  No fear however.

But this reminds me that recently, my distro vendor, Mandrake,
officially endorsed resize2fs over ext2resize for the simple reason
that resize2fs was in the e2fsprogs package and ext2resize is not.  In
fact they recently move the ext2resize-1.1.17-1mdk.i586 package from
their "main" distribution to their "contrib" distribution with the
following notice:

> better tool in e2fsprogs
>=20
> These packages has been moved from cooker main to cooker contrib:
>=20
> - ext2resize-1.1.17-1mdk.i586
> - ext2resize-1.1.17-1mdk.src

I asked which tool it was that was better and the response was:

> tv@vador ~ $ rpm -ql e2fsprogs-1.32-2mdk | fgrep resiz
> /sbin/resize2fs
> /usr/share/man/man8/resize2fs.8.bz2
>
> try ext2resize on a fs with bad blocks, features it did not know,
> ...
> whereas with resize2fs, you can expect it to be updated when other
> e2fs tools're for a new feature...

Additionally this was the "note" that was sent out along with the
Mandrake ext2resize-1.1.17-1mdk package:

  WARNING: you should probably use resize2fs from e2fsprogs
           which is more robust.

So the lagging release of an updated ext2resize package (that deals
with features in recent ext2/3 filesystems) and the "theory" that
because resize2fs is part of the "official" ext2/ext3 "project" it is
more likely to be up to date and compatible with ext2/3 seems to be
hurting ext2resize.

So what is the future for the ext[2|3][resize|online] tools?  Is all
of the needed kernel support for resizing ext3 filesystems online
going to be in the 2.6 kernel?  Are there any plans to try to get it
into a 2.4 release?

Are the ext[2|3]online tool(s) going to be the "official" tool for
resizing ext2/3 filesystems online?  Will they be merged into
e2fsprogs any time soon?

b.

--=20
Brian J. Murrell