Re: mkfile -- create large files efficiently

[Pádraig Brady]

Matej Cepl wrote:
> OK, another turn around of fixes. This is just the last patch,
> whole branch is available at 
> http://github.com/mcepl/coreutils/tree/truncate-fallocate (repo
> URL is git://github.com/mcepl/coreutils.git).
> 
> One note about this patch is that I have unsuccesfully tried to
> use @bindir@ to have the script independent for the location of
> truncate binary -- unfortunately I haven't managed to persuade
> autofoo to expand @bindir@ completely, so I have finished with
> ${exec_prefix}/bin which is useless. I have now in the patch
> temporary /usr/bin/truncate, but I am turning myself towards
> stand that user should just have truncate executable in $PATH and
> to consider installation where mere truncate doesn't work as
> broken.
> 
> What do you think?

I noticed another thread with more info about fallocate:
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-April/msg00110.html

That got me thinking about whether we should use fallocate()
if available in cp etc. so ext4 etc. can allocate optimally?

cheers,
Pádraig.