Bcachefs Hopes to Remove "Experimental" Flag in the Next Year

Bcachefs lead developer Kent Overstreet has submitted feature patches for the Bcachefs file system in the upcoming Linux 6.12 kernel, aiming to remove its "EXPERIMENTAL" status within the next year. The new updates enhance performance, particularly for metadata-heavy workloads, with Bcachefs reportedly being 3-4 times faster than XFS for multi-threaded file creation. Key improvements include support for Idmap mounts, rename whiteouts, and advancements in erasure coding. Overstreet outlined the remaining challenges to removing the experimental label, which include improving the user experience during filesystem checks (fsck), implementing limited self-healing capabilities, and conducting comprehensive testing of repair paths. Additionally, enhancements are needed for degraded mounts to streamline user interaction and scalability improvements to support larger filesystems, as current fsck times limit usability for filesystems over 100TB. The team is working on these issues to make Bcachefs a more robust option for users.

- Bcachefs aims to remove its "EXPERIMENTAL" label within a year.

- The latest updates improve performance, especially for metadata-heavy tasks.

- Key challenges include enhancing user experience during filesystem checks and implementing self-healing features.

- Scalability improvements are necessary for supporting larger filesystems beyond 100TB.

- Bcachefs is reported to be significantly faster than XFS for multi-threaded file creation.