Re: [Nbd] More efficient treatment of experimental protocol extensions

[Alex Bligh <alex@...872...>]

Wouter,

On 16 Apr 2016, at 18:06, Wouter Verhelst <w@...112...> wrote:

> Hi Alex,
> 
> On Fri, Apr 15, 2016 at 02:18:37PM +0100, Alex Bligh wrote:
>> I've moved out WRITE_ZEROES on my own github account (so
>> we can all see what this looks like).
> 
> Part of the reason I gave you push access was so you wouldn't have to do
> that ;-)
> 
> Just push it to my repo. Don't be too afraid to do something stupid;
> it's just git, we can always fix that.

OK.

>> Branch 'separate-extensions' is what would end up in master,
>> and proto.md looks like this:
>>   https://github.com/abligh/nbd/blob/extension-write-zeroes/doc/proto.md
>> 
>> As you can see there is no mention of anything to do with WRITE_ZEROES
>> apart from reserving the bits with a link to the branch with the extension.
>> The link doesn't work as it's not on the official github server yet
>> (obviously).
>> 
>> Branch 'extension-write-zeroes' carries the extension, which is currently
>> a single patch putting the documentation in, plus my code patch for
>> a trivial implementation. I would push this to the *branch* on
>> the main repo. It obviously isn't yet ready for merge (as I haven't
>> tested the code even once), and this would be a precondition of
>> merging it to the main repo's master.
>> 
>> You can see the proto.md here:
>>   https://github.com/abligh/nbd/blob/extension-write-zeroes/doc/proto.md
>> 
>> As you can see WRITE_ZEREOS appears in it as a normal command etc
>> (not an option).
>> 
>> I've given HTTP links rather than a patch as the patch really isn't
>> very informative, but obviously I can send that if helpful.
>> 
>> I'm interested in confirmation that this approach works for people.
> 
> Sure does.

Great. As you can see I've done the structured replies extension too
now.

> Detail: might be an idea to retain the "extensions" section, but have it
> just be links to the specs and a one- or two-sentence description of
> what they entail?

That was exactly what I planned to do, plus some text about how
to propose new extensions (email this list) and how they get
incorporated (discussion on list, preferably code in the
reference implementation, preferably demonstrable interworking
with other implementations).

-- 
Alex Bligh