Binderfs Queued Ahead Of The Linux 4.21 Kernel

Greg Kroah-Hartman merged the Binderfs code to his char-misc-next branch on Wednesday, making it the latest feature set to premiere in the upcoming Linux 4.21 kernel.

Binderfs is a file-system for Android's Binder IPC mechanism. The Binder inter-process communication code has been mainlined for years and used extensively on Android though not without any real adoption on the Linux desktop side even as the likes of BUS1 and formerly KDBUS have not taken off for in-kernel IPC on GNU/Linux systems.

About Binderfs, "binderfs is a backwards-compatible filesystem for Android's binder ipc mechanism. Each ipc namespace will mount a new binderfs instance. Mounting binderfs multiple times at different locations in the same ipc namespace will not cause a new super block to be allocated and hence it will be the same filesystem instance. Each new binderfs mount will have its own set of binder devices only visible in the ipc namespace it has been mounted in. All devices in a new binderfs mount will follow the scheme binder%d and numbering will always start at 0."

Binderfs was talked about most recently at LPC2018:

More details can be found via this commit adding Binderfs to the kernel via the char-misc code. Assuming Linus Torvalds has no objections, it will be added with the upcoming Linux 4.21 merge window.