Bcachefs Linux File-System Seeing Performance Improvements, Other Progress

While Ubuntu continues in their path of OpenZFS integration, Fedora is revisiting the possibility of using Btrfs on the desktop, Red Hat is continuing to invest in Stratis, and Reiser5 is being developed, Bcachefs as the file-system born out of the Linux block cache code is continuing to evolve.

It's been some months since there was last any news on Bcachefs while last week marked the first time this year that there's been a status update passed along on the Patreon blog. Bcachefs development continues to be led by Kent Overstreet who wrote the latest status update on this currently out-of-tree file-system.

Recent work on Bcachefs includes interior btree node updates being journalled and fully transactional, btree key cache code was merged, a rework of the journal replay was finished, and a lot of bug fixing.

Overstreet noted in his post, "So, with all that done, there should be some performance improvements due to both not doing FUA btree node writes anymore, and also having the btree key cache enabled for the alloc btree. It's not enabled for the inodes btree yet - that patch still needs a bit more work. Next up: I think I'm going to see what I can get done with erasure coding."

There still doesn't appear to be any firm timeline for when Bcachefs will hopefully be mainlined, but at least progress is being made after several months without any updates. Those wanting to try out Bcachefs or explore its code and current features can learn more at Bcachefs.org. Given the recent performance work, soon I'll try to find the time to run some current benchmarks on Bcachefs.