Re: [RFC PATCH 0/8] staging: apfs: init APFS module

Aditya Garg
2025-03-16T06:31:10Z

> On 16 Mar 2025, at 9:01 AM, Ernesto A. Fernández <ernesto.mnd.fernandez@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Hi Ethan,
>
> I'm happy to see your enthusiasm for my driver but, if you want to help, I
> think you should simply send the changes you have in mind to the out-of-tree
> repo. That way you'll start learning the codebase while I can review your
> work and run xfstests for you. Filesystems are very dangerous things; I've
> probably done a lot of damage myself back in the day trying to help out with
> the hfs drivers.
>
> As for upstreaming, the driver still has a few rough edges, but I don't
> think that's the real reason I never tried to submit. I'm just no longer
> confident that filesystem compatibility is a reasonable goal, and I don't
> expect much interest from reviewers. There are too many risks, and too many
> hardware restrictions these days; regular users have much easier (even if
> slower) ways to move their files around. Other uses exist of course (like
> Aditya can explain), but they are a bit esoteric. Of course if upstream
> people disagree, and they do want the apfs support, I will be glad to
> prepare a patch series.

As far as I can tell, in case of upstreaming, making the FS readonly is worth it.

Writes, I won’t comment. Maybe add option to force them, just like it is rn, old just remove
the whole code. The second option IMO would require quite a lot of work from your side.