Support of files/raw partitions > 4Gb

[Kirill Berezin]

Bill Davidsen ?????:
> Kirill Berezin wrote:
>>> As a matter of good practice, all offsets should be type off_t, 
>>> since they may not match any other type in size.
>>>
>> This is a really good style, but in this case one should carefully 
>> convert small types, because the use of small types is essential to 
>> save the storage space.
>
> In general "small" or "large" are irrelevant, "correct" is. Using 
> appropriate sizes avoids issues such as not supporting more than 4GB 
> files. Given that many compilers use full size integers in structs by 
> default, I'm not sure how much space small size typically save, and 
> converting to and from small sizes like char and short to the CPU 
> native integer size certainly uses some cycles. I have no argument 
> with using the smallest size which will legitimately hold the full 
> range of values, but I doubt it make a measurable saving relative to 
> the disk and memory requirements of a typical news server.
>
> I'm not saying your point is wrong, clearly no value should be larger 
> than is needed, but I doubt that there's a big saving to had by doing 
> that. I admit I believe in having programs pedantically correct, not 
> everyone may agree.
>
I'm out of arguments, but the problem with overviews have to be fixed. I 
have just suggested two possible solutions.