Bcachefs Looks Like It Won't Make It For Linux 6.6

While we've been looking forward to Bcachefs landing and carrying out a fresh round of performance testing of Bcachefs against other file-system options, it's looking clear now that Bcachefs won't be landing for the Linux 6.6 merge window.

On Wednesday, Linus Torvalds commented on the Bcachefs prospects and pointed out that Bcachefs wasn't recently vetted in linux-next, the Bcachefs Git pull request wasn't properly PGP signed, and Torvalds himself hit a build issue when trying to compile the new Bcachefs code. At the very least a new pull request would be needed to have it properly signed and also fixing up the build issue encountered by Torvalds. But that would still lack the linux-next testing/exposure.

Linus Torvalds was also hoping for assurances that the Bcachefs development would jive with upstream kernel developers given the ongoing friction by multiple parties. Unfortunately, things haven't smoothed over this week.

Bcachefs lead developer Kent Overstreet began his latest kernel mailing list post with, "Honestly, though, this process is getting entirely kafkaesque." After proceeding to air his ongoing frustrations with the Linux kernel upstream process and developer interactions, his latest message ended with, "I'm going to go offline for awhile and think about what I want to do next."

Thus with going offline / taking a break and the Linux 6.6 merge window over this weekend and no new pull request attempts, it's looking pretty clear now that Bcachefs for mainline won't be resolved this cycle and no last minute attempts at pushing through a new pull request. Thus at least another cycle of waiting while hopefully seeing Bcachefs mainlined in a winter kernel release.