A Study of Linux File System Evolution LANYUE LU, ANDREA C. ARPACI-DUSSEAU, REMZI H. ARPACI-DUSSEAU, FILEAND SHAN LU SYSTEMS Lanyue Lu is a PhD student Shan Lu is an Assistant Professor in the Computer Sciences Department at the University in Computer Sciences at the of Wisconsin—Madison. Her research interests include software reliability and computer University of Wisconsin— systems.
[email protected] Madison. His research interests include file systems, storage systems, and cloud computing.
[email protected] e conducted a comprehensive study of Linux file system evolu- tion by analyzing eight years of changes across 5,079 patches, Andrea Arpaci-Dusseau is deriving numerous new (and sometimes surprising) insights into a Professor and Associate W the file-system development process. Our observations should be useful to Chair of Computer Sciences at file-system developers, systems researchers, and tool builders. Careful study the University of Wisconsin- Madison. Andrea co-leads of these results should bring about a new generation of more robust, reliable, a research group with her husband, Remzi and performant file systems. Arpaci-Dusseau, and has advised 13 students A file system is not a static entity. Its code base constantly evolves through the addition of through their PhD dissertations. She is currently new features, repair of uncovered bugs, and improvement of performance and reliability. a UW-Madison Vilas Associate and received For young file systems, code sizes increase significantly over time. For example, ext4 nearly the Carolyn Rosner “Excellent Educator” award; doubled its code size from Linux 2.6.19 (when it was introduced) to Linux 2.6.39.