Bcachefs File-System Is Working On Going Upstream In The Linux Kernel

Kent Overstreet who has been spending the past few years working on the Bcachefs file-system born out of the BCache block cache technology is now starting work on upstreaming the code to the mainline kernel.

For facilitating an easier review process, he begun by sending out the patches for the on-disk data structures and ioctl interface exposed to user-space. This is just over one thousand lines of code while the entire file-system implementation is more than fifty thousand lines of new code.

Overstreet believes the on-disk format for BCachefs is now in good shape and he doesn't see any reason why he would have to break it at this point. From the recent Linux Storage and File-Systems summit, he mentions that other upstream Linux kernel developers are open to accepting this readied file-system into the mainline tree.

The initial patches for review can be found on the kernel mailing list. It will be interesting to see if Bcachefs is reviewed and approved in time for Linux 4.18 or if this upstreaming process will take a few cycles to materialize, nevertheless with it being two or three years since I last tried out the experimental code, I look forward to running some fresh benchmarks once its mainline.

Bcachefs is a copy-on-write file-system that supports native compression, encryption, caching, snapshots, multiple devices, and other modern capabilities. Those wishing to learn more about the file-system itself can visit Bcachefs.org.