Bcachefs Fixes Pull Once Again Frustrates Linus Torvalds | Hacker News Reader

Bcachefs Fixes Pull Once Again Frustrates Linus Torvalds

phoronix.com

28 pointsmfiguiere10 comments

"frustrates Linus" is a bit of an understatement here, Linus is considering removing bcachefs from mainline.

If it's removed, I'm somewhat skeptical it can return once it's more mature. Kent seems to think that the problem is code maturity while Linus is making it clear that the problem is that Kent won't follow process and work with others. I don't think Kent's behavior will change as long as Kent is in charge of bcachefs no matter how mature the codebase gets.

[...] let's make it clear: you have exactly two choices here:

(a) play better with others

(b) take your toy and go home

I've been following from the sidelines, keen to see how bcachefs pans out. When it got included in the mainline kernel I was hoping that was a sign it was soon time to give it a proper whirl.

Based on the recent kerfuffle though, it really seems like the better move is to just remove it from mainline until it's a lot more mature.

> just remove it from mainline until it's a lot more mature.

The Code or Kent?

Is it possible to separate the two?

If Linux drops BCacheFS, it's dead. Let's be honest, nobody would be using anything but ZFS if it was in tree - not having it first-party is what keeps Btrfs alive. If you have to install it from external sources than you're probably better off simply installing ZFS to begin with.

> nobody would be using anything but ZFS if it was in tree

I'd pick xfs anytime.

I don't know if it was already fixed, but ~1y ago had a really miserable experience using ZFS on my NVMe drives, zfs is like 100x slower in random read. And hey, I have fancy SSDs for a reason!

Yeah, but XFS has literally a fifth of the functionality ZFS has. If you need ZFS features you're basically forced to pick between ZFS or Btrfs, the former being vastly more stable.

"If you're so convinced you know best, I invite you to start writing your own filesystem. Go for it." - Kent

I wish Bcachefs was under a BSD or MIT license. It could then live on somewhere in BSD while things on the Linux side catch up. The real problem I wanted to solve was a ZFS replacement across Linux/BSD/Illumos without the licensing trouble. This latest hurdle makes me wish I had sent my Bcachefs donations to DragonFlyBSD instead. Weirdly, now I have more hope for HAMMER2.

Jesus Christ. I hope they can reconcile, because Linux _really_ needs a good, modern filesystem that's not a hassle to use. ZFS would be it but licencing stops it from being mainline, so it's always a pain to boot from it. Btrfs, well, is a lost cause. Linux needs BCacheFS TBH, so I think they should compromise somehow.

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