[vthriller]

> preferably sort its stat()s and open/read/close() by inode

A better approach would be to use information about location of data extents. Luckily there's already a crate that can help with that: https://github.com/the8472/platter-walk

[formerly_proven]

That's better for reading the data, but doesn't work for ordering stat()s because looking up extent information requires reading the inode, but that's what we're trying to make linear-ish at that point.

[the8472]

you can optimize for both. obtain directory entries, sort by inode, do a batch stat (ideally via io_uring) and fiemap and then sort again by extent order.

And if you only need the `d_type` instead of the full stat struct, then you get that for free from getdents(2) on some filesystems, this is what platter_walk does.