Reiser4 File-System Port To The Linux 4.20 Kernel

There hasn't been a formal Reiser4 file-system patch release since September when it was ported to the Linux 4.18 kernel, but via Git this week there is a port for the Linux 4.20 kernel should you want to utilize this once promising file-system under the latest stable patch series.

Edward Shishkin, the last main Reiser4 developer involved and former employee of Hans Reiser's Namesys company, has updated his Reiser4 kernel tree where there is now the few code changes necessary to get the file-system kernel module building for Linux 4.20 along with a patch containing a fix.

That's the most Reiser4 activity we've seen in months since back in September was the last patch release on SourceForge adding Linux 4.18.0 compatibility.

Shishkin does appear to be doing some feature work on Reiser4 as there is a format41 branch in his Git repository containing a number of patches. There is a lot of volume-related fixes and balancing work there along with a new key allocation scheme.

But as has been the case for years, it doesn't look like we'll see Reiser4 mainlined to the Linux kernel in 2019 unless there becomes a corporate backer to the file-system preferring this file-system over the likes of Btrfs, XFS, Red Hat's Stratis storage tech, or even ZFS On Linux.