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

Ethan Carter Edwards
2025-03-16T15:48:50Z

On 25/03/16 06:31AM, Aditya Garg wrote:
>
>
> > 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.

Definitely. I agree. From my understanding, and Ernesto, correct me if I
am wrong, but write is not explicity enabled unless mounted as so, unless
the module is compiled with CONFIG_APFS_RW_ALWAYS. I enabled this by
default in the previous patch set, but we could definitely add a Kconfig
/Kbuild option for 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.
>