During a recent discussion about the 27th edition of the patch set implementing the NTFS file system from Paragon Software, Linus Torvalds stated that he sees no obstacles to accepting this patch set in the next merge window. If no unforeseen issues arise, the NTFS support from Paragon Software will be included in version 5.15 of the kernel, which is expected to be released in November.
In the time remaining before the patches are accepted into the kernel, Linus recommended double-checking the correctness of the signed-off signature in the patches, confirming authorship of the transmitted code and readiness for its distribution within the kernel under a free license. Paragon Software has also been advised to ensure that its legal department understands all implications of transferring code under the GPLv2 license and comprehends the essence of this copyleft license.
The code for the new NTFS driver was opened by Paragon Software in August of last year and differs from the existing kernel driver in its ability to work in write mode. The old driver has not been updated for many years and is in poor condition. The new driver supports all capabilities of the current NTFS 3.1 version, including extended file attributes, data compression mode, efficient handling of holes in files, and playback of changes from the journal to restore integrity after failures.
In the 27th edition of the patches, Paragon Software adapted the driver for changes in the iov API, replacing the call to iov_iter_copy_from_user_atomic() with copy_page_from_iter_atomic() and discontinuing the use of the iov_iter_advance() function. Among the recommendations expressed in the discussion, there remains only the guidance to convert the code to use fs/iomap, but this is not a mandatory requirement, just a recommendation that can be implemented after inclusion in the kernel. Additionally, Paragon Software has confirmed that it is ready to maintain the proposed code in the kernel and plans to further transition the implementation of journaling to work on top of the existing kernel's universal block device JBD (Journaling block device), on which journaling is based for ext3, ext4, and OCFS2.
Source: opennet.ru
