It’s been a while since having anything major to talk about with the NILFS2 file-system but it looks like that could be changing. NILFS2 as a reminder is a log-structured file-system with continuous snapshotting with its NILFS predecessor having been in the mainline kernel for two decades since the mid Linux 2.6 days.
There hasn’t been too much churn around the NILFS2 file-system driver or user-space tools in recent years during a time at which the likes of Btrfs, F2FS, and Bcachefs capture much of the limelight. But it looks like as we approach 2026 that NILFS2 could be seeing some renewed activity.
NILFS2 maintainer Ryusuke Konishi sent out a patch to the Linux kernel mailing list today adding Viacheslav Dubeyko as a second maintainer for the NILFS2 file-system. Konishi added with the patch message:
“Viacheslav has kindly offered to help with the maintenance of nilfs2 by upstreaming patches, similar to the HFS/HFS+ tree. I’ve accepted his offer, and will therefore add him as a co-maintainer and switch the project’s git tree for that role.
At the same time, change the outdated status field to Maintained to reflect the current state.
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Hi Andrew,Please add this to the queue for the merge window.
Viacheslav will help with nilfs2 maintenance (upstreaming), so change the entry in the MAINTAINERS file to acknowledge this.
After the next merge window is over, I plan to send nilfs2 patches to the mainline through him. I sincerely appreciate your cooperation in the upstreaming work over the years.”
This was posted today to the Linux kernel mailing list.
It’s been over a decade since I last benchmarked or tested NILFS2, so perhaps it’s a good time soon to revisit.
