The bcachefs file system, now “externally maintained” exterior the Linux kernel codebase, presents packages of its first model to be loadable on the fly.

The event of bcachefs has been formally jettisoned from that of the Linux kernel itself. At current, the work-in-progress kernel 6.17 nonetheless comprises bcachefs code, however unmodified from the 6.16 launch. In response, the venture has revealed its first set of packages of a model that may be dynamically loaded as a DKMS module, as promised a few weeks in the past in an email from venture lead Kent Overstreet.

It is obtainable as an APT repository, which in the interim limits it to Ubuntu and Debian-based distros.

That is the code that will have been the newer revision inside kernel 6.17 – however Linus Torvalds banished it final month. Which means in case you check on the present launch candidate of kernel 6.17, there are two completely different variations of bcachefs obtainable: the built-in one, which is identical code as in kernel 6.16, and alternatively the newer model obtainable within the dynamically loaded DKMS code.

Linux benchmarking web site Phoronix lately ran a set of performance tests evaluating all of the built-in file programs in 6.17, and bcachefs didn’t fare properly. We counted 16 assessments throughout 5 pages of graphs, and bcachefs was the slowest or next-to-last in all of them. Phoronix repeated the tests with the brand new DKMS model, and it does comparatively higher. In a number of assessments, the brand new model is about twice as quick, and ranks in the midst of the pack.

So transferring to DKMS has in a roundabout way harmed it, and the brand new model is performing significantly higher. There’s nonetheless room for enchancment, however this younger and never but extremely optimized code is progressing properly.

openSUSE adjustments place

Since we reported that openSUSE was dropping bcachefs support, Overstreet has talked to the kernel maintainers there too. It appears like the corporate’s hard-line stance has been toned down. For now, there’s a patch to the openSUSE kernel that prints a warning message:

The feedback within the openSUSE bugzilla entry listed there present that the change is into account. After Overstreet chimed in on the openSUSE Factory mailing list, it now appears like openSUSE Tumbleweed will not take away bcachefs when kernel 6.17 ships. Developer Jiří Slabý said:

That is excellent news for Tumbleweed customers, in addition to for bcachefs itself.

There could also be bother forward…

Not all of the information trickling out is nice, although. Lengthy-time kernel developer Christoph Hellwig submitted a patch to linux-next that will take away help for the write_cache_pages API from kernel 6.18 and later.

The proposed change is that with the elimination of bcachefs, nothing makes use of it any extra. NTFS3 is now built in and OpenZFS can’t be included and by no means will, except Oracle decides to re-license it – which is unlikely.

Hellwig has often featured on The Register for a decade or extra, since he accused VMware of ripping off Linux kernel source code in 2015. In a 2016 follow-up, we referred to him as an “ace kernel developer.”

It may very well be stated, although, he is no diplomat. Extra lately, The Reg reported that he likened mixing Rust and C within the Linux kernel to most cancers.

It does appear to be eradicating this API would make life very far more tough for file programs whose code doesn’t kind a part of the kernel supply code. Even when no built-in code makes use of it, we might choose to not see OpenZFS and bcachefs crippled by its elimination.

Bootnote

When it seemed like bcachefs could be excommunicated, we reported on criticism by Meta kernel developer Josef Bacik, who praised Btrfs and whose criticisms of Overstreet we felt had been among the many extra savage. The persona clashes to which we referred weren’t solely these between Torvalds and Overstreet.

Only a couple of weeks later, Bacik announced on Mastodon that he was leaving Meta and stopping his kernel improvement efforts. As a substitute, he’ll work for cash bonfire owners Anthropic. ®


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