[Gluster-devel] relative ordering of writes to same file from two different fds

[Jeff Darcy]

> compatible to linux page cache will always to be a better practice
> way, because there is a lot local applications that has already rely
> on its semantics.

I don't think users even *know* how the page cache behaves.  I don't
think even its developers do, in the sense of being able to define it in
sufficient detail for formal verification.  Instead certain cases are
intentionally left undefined - the "odd behavior" Ric mentioned - and
can change any time the implementation does.  What users have are
expectations of things that are guaranteed and things that are not, and
the wiser ones know to stay away from things in the second set even if
they appear to work most of the time.

As Raghavendra Talur points out, we already seem to provide normal
linearizability across file descriptors on a single client.  There
doesn't seem to be much reason to change that.  However, I still
maintain that there's little value to the user in trying to satisfy
stricter POSIX guarantees or closer approximations of whatever the
page cache is doing that day.  That's especially true since we run on
multiple operating systems which almost certainly have different
behavior in some of the edge cases.