F2FS Improves Zoned Block Device Support With Linux 6.8

In addition to the Bcachefs changes for Linux 6.8, the Flash-Friendly File-System (F2FS) changes have also been separately submitted for the ongoing Linux 6.8 merge window.

The F2FS changes for Linux 6.8 aren't quite as exciting as on the Bcachefs side, but do include continued enablement around zoned block device support. F2FS on zoned block device now support disabling checkpoints that are "essential for Android OTA" and better handling the behavior of zoned block storage (ZBS) devices. With these drives, zones can only be written sequentially and starting from the beginning of the zone, with the storage drive dividing the address space into multiple zones. Zones can also not be arbitrarily overwritten, which also requires special handling by the file-system.

The F2FS updates for Linux 6.8 also include adding new sysfs entries around discard status and other features. There are also new tracepoints exposed and a variety of bug fixes.

More details on the F2FS feature updates for Linux 6.8 via this pull request. F2FS continues to prove itself to be quite a capable open-source and mainline file-system for smartphones and other embedded flash storage devices as well as SSDs.