When and why to deprecate filesystems [LWN.net]

When and why to deprecate filesystems

Posted Mar 18, 2022 4:04 UTC (Fri) by pabs (subscriber, #43278)
In reply to: When and why to deprecate filesystems by mrugiero
Parent article: When and why to deprecate filesystems

I'm looking forward to the Linux Kernel Library project being merged, that would probably allow using all Linux kernel filesystem code in userspace, then you could add a FUSE wrapper for them.

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When and why to deprecate filesystems

Posted Mar 18, 2022 8:20 UTC (Fri) by smurf (subscriber, #17840) [Link]

That doesn't help much. In the distant future you won't be able to compile then-ancient kernels (i.e. those with reiserfs still in them) with then-current compilers, just like you can't compile now-ancient kernels with gcc 12.

It doesn't matter (much) whether that kernel shall compile to a mere FUSE helper that exports a reiserfs file system, or a full-blown kernel you'd run in a VM (mount the reiserfs image there and export it to the host via NFS or CIFS). Assuming it'll work in that then-current VM; that's mostly likely, IMHO, but by no means assured.

The solution is (assuming that there is no reiserfs support library you can use a shortcut) to extract a libreiserfs from the kernel and remove all the kernel idiosyncrasies from it. At that point it's standard C plus libfuse and thus presumably easier to keep up-to-date with whatever fun incompatibilities the C and/or FUSE people will throw in your path in the future.