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Date:   Thu, 6 Jul 2023 15:31:46 -0400
From:   Kent Overstreet <kent.overstreet@linux.dev>
To:     Eric Sandeen <sandeen@sandeen.net>
Cc:     Josef Bacik <josef@toxicpanda.com>, torvalds@linux-foundation.org,
        linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, linux-fsdevel@vger.kernel.org,
        linux-bcachefs@vger.kernel.org, djwong@kernel.org,
        dchinner@redhat.com, sandeen@redhat.com, willy@infradead.org,
        tytso@mit.edu, bfoster@redhat.com, jack@suse.cz,
        andreas.gruenbacher@gmail.com, brauner@kernel.org,
        peterz@infradead.org, akpm@linux-foundation.org,
        dhowells@redhat.com
Subject: Re: [GIT PULL] bcachefs
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On Thu, Jul 06, 2023 at 02:17:29PM -0500, Eric Sandeen wrote:
> On 7/6/23 12:38 PM, Kent Overstreet wrote:
> > Right now what I'm hearing, in particular from Redhat, is that they want
> > it upstream in order to commit more resources. Which, I know, is not
> > what kernel people want to hear, but it's the chicken-and-the-egg
> > situation I'm in.
> 
> I need to temper that a little. Folks in and around filesystems and storage
> at Red Hat find bcachefs to be quite compelling and interesting, and we've
> spent some resources in the past several months to investigate, test,
> benchmark, and even do some bugfixing.
> 
> Upstream acceptance is going to be a necessary condition for almost any
> distro to consider shipping or investing significantly in bcachefs. But it's
> not a given that once it's upstream we'll immediately commit more resources
> - I just wanted to clarify that.

Yeah, I should probably have worder that a bit better. But in the
conversations I've had with people at other companies it does sound like
the interest is there, it's just that filesystem/storage teams are not
so big these days as to support investing in something that is not yet
mainlined.

> It is a tough chicken and egg problem to be sure. That said, I think you're
> right Kent - landing it upstream will quite likely encourage more interest,
> users, and hopefully developers.

Gotta start somewhere :)
 
> Maybe it'd be reasonable to mark bcachefs as EXPERIMENTAL or similar in
> Kconfig, documentation, and printks - it'd give us options in case it
> doesn't attract developers and Kent does get hit by a bus or decide to go
> start a goat farm instead (i.e. in the worst case, it could be yanked,
> having set expectations.)

Yeah, it does need to be marked EXPERIMENTAL initially, regardless -
staged rollout please, not everyone all at once :)