OK, LittleFS should be used instead, but it is NOT a replacement for me, since LittleFS has a minmum block size of 4K which would mean a dramatic waste of the limited EEPROM space and invoke too much write operation for simple data logging with messages about 60 bytes length.
256 bytes is just tremendously better. Even that is too big, but to impose 4Kis just unacceptable!
I can surely get the SPIFFS lib from GitHub and include it manually, but it will unnecessarily complicate the deployment of my project.
Why the hell did they drop a working feature!