Why isn't F2FS support in the Kernel?

[Eric Sandeen]

On 12/22/14 12:12 PM, Gerald B. Cox wrote:
> 
> On Mon, Dec 22, 2014 at 9:32 AM, Josh Boyer <jwboyer at fedoraproject.org <mailto:jwboyer at fedoraproject.org>> wrote:
> 
>     > Is there any hardware out there that uses it?
> 
>     Aside from the hardware already mentioned in this thread, which Fedora
>     doesn't run on, there might be some generic ARM boards that could use
>     it.
> 
> 
> One use that quickly comes to mind is USB Flash drives... check out:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F2FS

I'm not an F2FS expert by any means, but I think that's correct.

from Neil Brown's LWN writeup a while ago:

> f2fs is not targeted at raw flash devices, but rather at the specific
> hardware that is commonly available to consumers — SSDs, eMMC, SD
> cards, and other flash storage with an FTL (flash translation layer)
> already built in.

I'd encourage those advocating for enabling this to put it through its paces,
and see where it's at, rather than keying off phoronix & ubuntu.

In particular, getting [x]fstests up & running on f2fs shouldn't be too hard,
and it would be good to see if it uncovers any problems.

There was a patch to enable it on the list:

http://oss.sgi.com/archives/xfs/2014-06/msg00030.html

but it's not merged... I'll ask Dave about that.

Fedora succeeds when committed people share their time & effort .. can you
give f2fs a go w/ [x]fstests and report back?  Scratch that itch.  ;)
I can give you a hand running xfstests if you need it.

-Eric