With Linus Torvalds having recently marked Bcachefs as being “externally maintained” following ongoing disagreement over the generally accepted Linux kernel development practices, the plans were laid out today for shipping Bcachefs as an out-of-tree DKMS module.
Bcachefs lead developer Kent Overstreet laid out his plans for shipping the file-system kernel driver as a DKMS (Dynamic Kernel Module Support) module moving forward. Akin to the NVIDIA driver support and other out-of-tree drivers being able to jive with the DKMS framework for easier out-of-tree kernel handling, particularly when upgrading your kernel.
With the DKMS’ed Bcachefs, you can still use Bcachefs as your root file-system — barring any incompatibility troubles with the new kernel version building the DKMS module.
The other part of the equation expressed in the mailing list post is the hope that distributions will continue to update their bcachefs-tools package for the user-space components around Bcachefs.
All the details for those interested in using the out-of-tree Bcachefs DKMS support moving forward can find all the details via this mailing list post.
