linux-kernel - [RFC] apfs: thoughts on upstreaming an out-of-tree module

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Message-ID: <rxefeexzo2lol3qph7xo5tgnykp5c6wcepqewrze6cqfk22leu@wwkiu7yzkpvp>
Date: Thu, 27 Feb 2025 20:53:56 -0500
From: Ethan Carter Edwards <ethan@...ancedwards.com>
To: linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org
Cc: linux-fsdevel@...r.kernel.org, linux-staging@...ts.linux.dev, 
	asahi@...ts.linux.dev
Subject: [RFC] apfs: thoughts on upstreaming an out-of-tree module

Lately, I have been thinking a lot about the lack of APFS support on
Linux. I was wondering what I could do about that. APFS support is not 
in-tree, but there is a proprietary module sold by Paragon software [0].
Obviously, this could not be used in-tree. However, there is also an 
open source driver that, from what I can tell, was once planned to be 
upstreamed [1] with associated filesystem progs [2]. I think I would 
base most of my work off of the existing FOSS tree.

The biggest barrier I see currently is the driver's use of bufferheads.
I realize that there has been a lot of work to move existing filesystem
implementations to iomap/folios, and adding a filesystem that uses
bufferheads would be antithetical to the purpose of that effort.
Additionally, there is a lot of ifndefs/C preprocessor magic littered
throughout the codebase that fixes functionality with various different
versions of Linux. 

The first step would be to move away from bufferheads and the
versioning. I plan to start my work in the next few weeks, and hope to
have a working driver to submit to staging by the end of June. From
there, I will work to have it meet more kernel standards and hopefully
move into fs/ by the end of the year.

Before I started, I was wondering if anyone had any thoughts. I am open
to feedback. If you think this is a bad idea, let me know. I am very
passionate about the Asahi Linux project. I think this would be a good
way to indirectly give back and contribute to the project. While I
recognize that it is not one of Asahi's project goals (those being
mostly hardware support), I am confident many users would find it
helpful. I sure would.

Thanks,
Ethan Carter Edwards <ethan@...ancedwards.com>

[0]: https://www.paragon-software.com/us/home/apfs-linux/
[1]: https://github.com/linux-apfs/linux-apfs-rw
[2]: https://github.com/linux-apfs/apfsprogs