[PATCH 02/18] xstat: Add a pair of system calls to make extended file stats available [ver #6]

[Jeremy Allison]

On Fri, Aug 06, 2010 at 01:38:36PM +1000, Neil Brown wrote:
> I'm curious.  Why do you particularly care what interface the kernel uses to
> provide you with access to this attribute?

It's a matter of taste. The *BSD's have this right IMHO. It
should be part of the stat information. A file timestamp is not
an EA. Making it available that way just feels like an appalingly
tasteless kludge. It offends the artist in me :-).

> Or do you really want something like BSD's 'btime' which as I understand it
> cannot be set.  Would that be really useful to you?

It is *already* useful to us, and is widely used in
existing code. The occasions when btime is set are
relatively rare, and at that point we store it in a
separate EA for Windows reporting purposes.

Jeremy.