Bcachefs Going Through Period Of More Performance Optimizations

Bcachefs was sent out for another round of review at the end of October. While it doesn't look like this file-system born out of Linux's block cache code will be mainlined in the immediate near future, it's still on a nice trajectory.

The October post to the Linux kernel mailing list outlined all of the current features and those recently completed like erasure coding, inline data extents, and more -- plus many bug fixes.

Since that posting, Bcachefs has been focusing on performance optimizations/fixes. Kent Overstreet as the lead Bcachefs developer mentioned that fellow file-system developer veteran Dave Chinner has jumped in to help with testing of the experimental file-system. In using a dual socket machine Chinner was able to uncover some scalability issues and areas where Bcachefs isn't yet to the same level as XFS.

Overstreet as a result has been working on improvements to the file-system's journalling code, increasing the pipelined journal entries, and also some lock contention issues are going to be worked on with Bcachefs' fsync path.

Those interested in more details on the latest performance work being pursued by the Bcachefs effort can see this Patreon post.