Apple Designs New File-System To Succeed HFS+

[pal666]

At some point people said that RAID and volume managment was not the job of a filesystem and accused ZFS of "layering violation".

so now anything is a filesystem's job?

[gbudny]

It's a preview in macOS Sierra (10.12). It won't be available as the main filesystem until next year (10.13).

I use Linux and Mac on my Mac mini. I start to worry that Paragon won't prepare their application for Linux that helps to me read/write files on the Mac partition.

In this case, Linux users can not rely on the open source community because they will be developing these applications for many years. I think that Linux kernel still doesn't fully support HFS+.

[devius]

Many big-name third-party applications (I'm looking at you Adobe), won't even install onto a case-sensitive volume.

And Steam as well....

[Awesomeness]

Many big-name third-party applications (I'm looking at you Adobe), won't even install onto a case-sensitive volume.

Then both will need to fix their software.

[wizard69]

I think you got the acronym wrong. It should read AFTFS. (About F***ing Time! File System)

Seriously though, HFS+ is an awful file system that can't die quick enough.

I really like like my Mac as my primary machine, best thing since sliced bread in my opinion. But I have to agree 100% with you it is well over due. HFS+ just sucks. The big question in my mind is how long will it take the company to get this new file system stable.

[wizard69]

Incompatible licensing, again...

Apple has been releasing a lot of software as open source, so I'm not sure what your problem is. They do avoid the evil licenses like GPL 3, but so do a lot of other rational people.

[wizard69]

"It will be interesting to see if APFS is open-source or not"

lol... good one, Michael.

You might be a bit out of touch but Apple has released a lot of open software of late. WWDC is running right now and they have released even more open software. Frankly Apple has been supporting open source for years now.

[wizard69]

Seriously... they cannot use existing and superior file systems?
They always have to be "different", even if it's nit for better...

Huh? Are you serious. First off there is no such thing as a superior file system, they are all under fairly constant development. Second this is a flash / modern storage devices file system few of which exist today nor are fully ready for deployment.

Third Apple isn't so much different here but rather has the same problem MS has, that is it needs to support existing customers with backward compatibility. When HFS hit there was nothing like it so they had to go their own way. The unfortunate thing is that HFS goes all the way back to the days where machines came with floppy drives not hard drives. Fundamentally it is a very very old file system.

[k1e0x]

It'd be great if someone could develop one of these great filesystems with a permissive licence, so everyone could use the same one.

ZFS actually has a permissive licence. Linux does not. That's why everything except Linux already has it. - An this is REALLY a problem. I highly doubt the GNU's goal was to create barriers for software the way it has. Open source won and now we are squabbling over technicalities that few lawyers even understand. I really think that weak copyleft is the right approach, strong copyleft does nothing but bite Linux in the ass and deny it from progressing.

[wizard69]

That's not even open source.
Documenting something in the open doesn't necessarily mean they release their code under any sort of open license.

Sure it is, it isn't open source "code" but it is open source "documentation". Besides that statement was very carefully worded we really don't know what will happen a year or two from now with the code. Given that if the documentation is good, a compatible Linux interface could be written.