In response to whether or not he had any objections to merging FUSE [1] [story [2]] into the mainline kernel, Andrew Morton [interview [3]] offered some insight [4] into what new features were slated for the upcoming 2.6.12 kernel. Andrew began, "I was planning on sending FUSE onto Linus in a week or two," going on to add "that and cpusets [5] are the notable features which are 2.6.12 candidates."

Andrew then referred to several other patches currently in his -mm patchset [story [6]], discussing their likelihood of being merged into the mainline kernel. He described crashdump [story [7]] as seeming "permanently not-quite-ready". He noted that perfctr [8] "works fine", but that it was "similar-to-but-different-from" the IA64 perfmon [9] subsystem, and "might not be suitable for ppc64". Both nfsacl [thread [10]] and the device-mapper multipath [thread [11]] patches were deemed "OK for 2.6.12". Regarding cachefs, Andrew noted it "is a bit stuck because it's a ton of complex code and afs is the only user of it. Wiring it up to NFS would help." Finally, regarding whether or not he planned to merge reiser4 [story [12]], he said this was "less clear" going on to add "once all the review comments have been addressed and we start seeing a bit of vendor pull for it, maybe."

From: Miklos Szeredi [email blocked]
To:  akpm
Subject: [request for inclusion] Filesystem in Userspace 
Date: 	Wed, 02 Mar 2005 19:17:13 +0100

Hi Andrew!

Do you have any objections to merging FUSE in mainline kernel?

It's been in -mm for the 2.6.11 cycle, and the same code was released
a month ago as FUSE-2.2.  So it should have received a fair amount of
testing, with no problems found so far.

The one originally merged into -mm already addressed all major issues
that people found (most importantly the OOM deadlock thing), and
though there were some minor changes in the interface since then, I
feel that the current kernel interface will stand up to the test of
time.

Thanks,
Miklos



From: Andrew Morton [13] [email blocked]
Subject: Re: [request for inclusion] Filesystem in Userspace
Date: 	Wed, 2 Mar 2005 12:31:23 -0800

Miklos Szeredi [email blocked] wrote:
>
> Do you have any objections to merging FUSE in mainline kernel?

I was planning on sending FUSE into Linus in a week or two.  That and
cpusets are the notable features which are 2.6.12 candidates.

- crashdump seems permanently not-quite-ready

- perfctr works fine, but is rather deadlocked because it is
  similar-to-but-different-from ia64's perfmon, and might not be suitable
  for ppc64 (although things have gone quiet on the latter front).

- nfsacl should be OK for 2.6.12 if Trond is OK with it.

- cachefs is a bit stuck because it's a ton of complex code and afs is
  the only user of it.  Wiring it up to NFS would help.

- dm multipath is OK for 2.6.12

- reiser4 is less clear.  Once all the review comments have been addressed
  and we start seeing a bit of vendor pull for it, maybe.



From: Christoph Hellwig [email blocked]
Subject: Re: [request for inclusion] Filesystem in Userspace
Date: 	Wed, 2 Mar 2005 22:19:01 +0000

On Wed, Mar 02, 2005 at 07:17:13PM +0100, Miklos Szeredi wrote:
> Hi Andrew!
> 
> Do you have any objections to merging FUSE in mainline kernel?
> 
> It's been in -mm for the 2.6.11 cycle, and the same code was released
> a month ago as FUSE-2.2.  So it should have received a fair amount of
> testing, with no problems found so far.
> 
> The one originally merged into -mm already addressed all major issues
> that people found (most importantly the OOM deadlock thing), and
> though there were some minor changes in the interface since then, I
> feel that the current kernel interface will stand up to the test of
> time.


Please give me or some other filesystem person some time to look over
it, there were a few things that looked really fishy.

And apologies for not having time to look at it earlier, but I'm a little
bit too busy right now.

• Archive of above thread [14]
• KernelTrap interview with Andrew Morton [15]