Wheeler: Fixing Unix/Linux/POSIX Filenames

I think you're overcomplicating things -- I wouldn't implement UTF-8 requirements at the VFS level (it just doesn't make sense, since there manifestly exist filesystems where you don't know the encoding, both from pre-existing Linux installs and with "foreign" filesystems). I'd make it a filesystem feature -- a flag in the ext2/3/4 header that's set at mkfs time, say. That removes all the issues about translating invalid filenames -- if that flag is set and a filename is invalid, then *your filesystem is corrupt*. fsck can check for such corruption if it feels like it.

Then you just get distros to set that flag on the root filesystem by default, add a few bits of API for programs who want to know "is this filesystem utf8-only?" or "how does this filesystem normalize names?" (which would be really useful calls anyway), and away you go.

(It's unfortunate that the Win32 designers screwed this up, but that's hardly an argument to perpetuate their mistake.)