Linus Torvalds has approved a request for the inclusion of the file system bcachefs in the main composition of Linux. This move comes after Torvalds added the Bcachefs implementation to the repository, which is part of the development branch of the version 6.7 of the Linux kernel. The release of this version is expected in early January. The patch added to the core includes approximately 95 thousand lines of code. The bcachefs project, which has been in development for over 10 years, has also developed a caching system of block devices on SSD-drives called Bcache.
The attempts to include BCACHEFS in the main composition of the Linux kernel began in 2020. It took nearly three years to address the comments and fix the shortcomings identified during the review process. In the spring of this year, an updated set of patches was proposed, which went through multiple revisions. Finally, in September, the patches were accepted.
BCACHEFS is developed using technologies that have already been tested during the development of the BCACH block device, which is designed for caching access to slow storage drives on fast SSD-drives. The bcachefs file system utilizes the Copy-on-write (COW) mechanism, where changes to data do not lead to the overwriting of existing data. Instead, a new state is recorded in a new place, and the index of the current state is updated accordingly. This mechanism ensures data integrity and efficiency during write operations.
Bcachefs aims to combine the performance, reliability, and scalability of XFS with