Re: [post LSFMM summary] where is fuse going?

["Darrick J. Wong" <djwong@kernel.org>]

On Tue, May 12, 2026 at 11:52:53AM +0200, Miklos Szeredi wrote:
> On Mon, 11 May 2026 at 19:18, Amir Goldstein <amir73il@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> > IMO, FAMFS sits somewhere between PASSTHROUGH and IOMAP.
> > The simple nature of the maps, the fact that famfs maps are const and
> > queried at file open time makes me think that famfs is much closer to
> > PASSTHROUGH than it is to IOMAP (in its full capacity).
> >
> > I think Joanne has mentioned that her customers have a use case for
> > multi backing ids per passthrough file and I assume this would be a pretty
> > simple map, so that sounds pretty darn close to famfs already.
> 
> TBH, I thought that fuse-iomap is just going to be a generalization of
> the passthrough interface.  At this point it seems like it's trying to
> do quite a bit more.

To me it's always been more about exposing to fuse servers the same
local filesystem file IO paths that in-kernel filesystems can use.

> > If we are being honest, then we need to develop features that users need
> > and if users need features, there are usually employers willing to pay for the
> > feature development and maintenance, if we let employers know that this is
> > what it takes to get their users what they need.
> 
> I fell that this is a "politically charged" topic.
> 
> Let's just say that maintainability is very important in big features
> like this.  Even deep pocketed employers can go broke or change their
> priorities, so we need code that can be understood by at least one
> additional person with a different background.  I think that would be
> a good enough guarantee that the code is not going to be a nightmare
> to maintain.

I can't credibly say much of anything to this right now. :(

--D