Re: [PATCH] Rebasing on Padraig's gnulib fallocate module and cleaning up

[Pádraig Brady]

Eric Sandeen wrote:
> Pádraig Brady wrote:
> 
> ...
> 
>> On a related note it looks like fallocate64() which is required
>> on 32 bit systems will not be supported in glibc-2.10 as it
>> was released as a glibc-2.11 symbol. That means that 32 bit `cp`
>> built on glibc-2.10 will not allocate extents for a file,
>> and likewise 32 bit `truncate --allocate` will resort to writing
>> zeros when built on glibc-2.10.
> 
> 
> Sorry for ignoring this thread and then chiming in late... but at least
> for myself, "truncate --allocate" is a bit confusing.   At least in the
> filesystem world, truncating and allocating are pretty much orthogonal,
> so making a tool called "truncate" which has an "allocate" mode is a bit
> odd to me.  It'd be kind of like having a "ls --du" command option.
> 
> I'd personally rather see a separate, dedicated fallocate tool ... but
> maybe that's just me.  You might run it by the fsdevel-list, or maybe
> I've bike-shedded enough already.  :)

I agree if starting now we would not call the syscall or util truncate.
However these have been in existence for ages. I.E. truncate sets
the apparent size of the file, so adding a --allocate option
to set the actual size (disk usage) seems justified.
Note FreeBSD also has a truncate utility.

cheers,
Pádraig.