Huawei Announces EROFS Linux File-System, Might Eventually Be Used By Android Devices
Huawei's Gao Xiang has announced the EROFS open-source Linux file-system intended for Android devices, but still at its very early stages of development.
EROFS is the company's new approach for a read-only file-system that would work well for Android devices. EROFS is short for the Extendable Read-Only File-System and they began developing it with being unsatisfied with other read-only file-system alternatives.
EROFS is designed to offer better performance than other read-only alternatives while still focusing upon saving storage space. As part of EROFS is also a compression mode pursuing a different design approach than other file-systems: the compression numbers shared in today's announcement on both server hardware and a Kirin 970 are compelling for being in the early stages of development.
EROFS is still very much a work-in-progress and the on-disk layout format has yet to be finalized. It will likely take several months at a minimum before Huawei potentially seeks the inclusion of the code into the mainline Linux kernel.
The user-space bits for making a EROFS file-system will be published once they clear their internal review, but for now the initial five thousand lines of kernel code making up this read-only file-system driver can be found for review and discussion on the kernel mailing list.
EROFS is the company's new approach for a read-only file-system that would work well for Android devices. EROFS is short for the Extendable Read-Only File-System and they began developing it with being unsatisfied with other read-only file-system alternatives.
EROFS is designed to offer better performance than other read-only alternatives while still focusing upon saving storage space. As part of EROFS is also a compression mode pursuing a different design approach than other file-systems: the compression numbers shared in today's announcement on both server hardware and a Kirin 970 are compelling for being in the early stages of development.
EROFS is still very much a work-in-progress and the on-disk layout format has yet to be finalized. It will likely take several months at a minimum before Huawei potentially seeks the inclusion of the code into the mainline Linux kernel.
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Don't look for EROFS appearing on Android devices in the immediate future, it's still in the very early stages of development.
The user-space bits for making a EROFS file-system will be published once they clear their internal review, but for now the initial five thousand lines of kernel code making up this read-only file-system driver can be found for review and discussion on the kernel mailing list.