Re: [GIT PULL] bcachefs

[Eric Sandeen <sandeen@sandeen.net>]

On 7/6/23 12:38 PM, Kent Overstreet wrote:
> Right now what I'm hearing, in particular from Redhat, is that they want
> it upstream in order to commit more resources. Which, I know, is not
> what kernel people want to hear, but it's the chicken-and-the-egg
> situation I'm in.

I need to temper that a little. Folks in and around filesystems and 
storage at Red Hat find bcachefs to be quite compelling and interesting, 
and we've spent some resources in the past several months to 
investigate, test, benchmark, and even do some bugfixing.

Upstream acceptance is going to be a necessary condition for almost any 
distro to consider shipping or investing significantly in bcachefs. But 
it's not a given that once it's upstream we'll immediately commit more 
resources - I just wanted to clarify that.

It is a tough chicken and egg problem to be sure. That said, I think 
you're right Kent - landing it upstream will quite likely encourage more 
interest, users, and hopefully developers.

Maybe it'd be reasonable to mark bcachefs as EXPERIMENTAL or similar in 
Kconfig, documentation, and printks - it'd give us options in case it 
doesn't attract developers and Kent does get hit by a bus or decide to 
go start a goat farm instead (i.e. in the worst case, it could be 
yanked, having set expectations.)

-Eric