FreeBSD codebase moved to use OpenZFS (ZFS on Linux)

Implementation of the ZFS file system in FreeBSD upstream (HEAD) translated to use the OpenZFS code that develops the codebase "ZFS on Linux' as the ZFS reference variant. In the spring, FreeBSD support was moved to the main OpenZFS project, after which it continued to develop all the FreeBSD-related changes, and FreeBSD developers were able to quickly transfer all the innovations developed by the OpenZFS project to the system.

Among the features that became available in FreeBSD after the transition to OpenZFS: an extended quota system, encryption of data sets, separate selection of allocation classes (allocation classes), the use of vector processor instructions to speed up the implementation of RAIDZ and calculation of checksums, support for the ZSTD compression algorithm, mode multihost(MMP, Multi Modifier Protection), improved command line toolkit, fixes many bugs related to race conditions and locks.

Recall that in December 2018, the FreeBSD developers came out with initiative transition to the implementation of ZFS from the project "ZFS on Linux» (ZoL), around which all the activity related to the development of ZFS has recently been concentrated. The stagnation of the ZFS codebase from the Illumos project (a fork of OpenSolaris) was cited as the reason for the migration, which was previously used as the basis for porting ZFS-related changes to FreeBSD.

The main contribution to the support of the ZFS codebase in Illumos until recently was made by Delphix, which develops the operating system Delphix OS (a fork of Illumos). Three years ago, Delphix made the decision to move to "ZFS on Linux", which led to the stagnation of ZFS from the Illumos project and the concentration of all development-related activity in the "ZFS on Linux" project, which is now considered the main implementation OpenZFS.

The FreeBSD developers decided to follow suit and not try to hold on to Illumos, as that implementation is already far behind in functionality and requires more resources to maintain the code and port changes. OpenZFS based on "ZFS on Linux" is now seen as a single collaborative ZFS development project.

Source: opennet.ru