We still don’t know what’s going to happen for Bcachefs in the Linux 6.17 kernel even with the merge window set to end on Sunday with the Linux 6.17-rc1 release. Linus Torvalds commented over one month ago that they would be parting ways for Linux 6.17. At the start of the Linux 6.17 merge window a Bcachefs pull request was submitted but nearly two weeks later it’s still not been pulled and Linus Torvalds hasn’t commented on the matter.
It looks like whatever is happening to Bcachefs will happen this weekend. Either Linus Torvalds will drop it entirely from the Linux kernel source tree, guard it behind “BROKEN” or some other Kconfig knob to make it clear that it’s not necessarily to the same standard/expectations as other areas of the kernel, put Bcachefs in “time-out” for a cycle or so like what happened in the past due to a CoC violation, or just give Kent another chance and try to proceed as normal… So far we don’t know with no Torvalds comments yet on the Linux kernel mailing list (LKML) or from any Git activity.
Stemming from ongoing LKML talk by those both in favor and against Bcachefs, Bcachefs lead developer Kent Overstreet wrote on the Linux kernel mailing list today with his thoughts:
“Well, Linus has been talking about removing bcachefs from the kernel for a long time, he’s made it quite clear that’s what he wants to do.
In the past the reasons were more that it was “experimental garbage”. I would hope the user reports have finally silenced that for good; it has stabilized incredibly quickly for a modern filesystem. (We’re now down to fewer open syzbot bugs than either ext4 or btrfs and the main bug tracker is nearly emptied out; we’re well on track for a very solid release and the experimental label off in 6.18).
Now, all the assertions are about how I don’t work with other maintainers and there’s a lot of other maintainers who want bcachefs deleted (along with talk about the need for public apologies, therapy, things of that nature); this on top of a page and a half rant about how Linus doesn’t trust my judgement within fs/bcachefs during the recent private maintainer thread).
But the assertions about all the other people I’ve been pissed off have been very light on details and don’t seem to mesh very well; they seem like more an attempt to keep long dead disputes alive than anything else.
Well, it’s still his kernel, if he wants to remove it that’s his choice…”
The ball is in Torvalds’ court.
