A read-only filesystem that will transparently share file data between disparate
directory trees, while also providing integrity verification for the data
and the
directory metadata, was recently posted as an
RFC
to the linux-kernel mailing list. Composefs was developed
by Alexander Larsson (who posted it) and Giuseppe Scrivano for use by podman containers and OSTree (or "libostree" as it
is now known) root directories, but there are likely others who want the
abilities
it provides. So far, there has been little response, either with feedback or
complaints, but it is a small patch set (around 2K lines of code) and
generally self-contained since it is a filesystem, so it would not be a
surprise to see it appear in some upcoming kernel.
When LWN looked at the composefs filesystem
in December, we reported that there had been "little response" to the
patches. That is no longer the case. Whether composefs (or something like
it) should be merged has become the subject of an extended debate; at its
core, the discussion is over just how Linux should support certain types of
container workloads.
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