For a short moment after it was added to the kernel, it seemed like there was a good chance of BcacheFS becoming an institution within the Linux ecosystem. A new filesystem with built-in multi-drive prioritized caching, replicas, encryption, subvolumes, the works. Anyone paying attention to the saga knows by now that this is not how things turned out, and with the release of Linux 6.18, BcacheFS was stripped out completely. BcacheFS still lives as an independently maintained project, an can be installed though the DKMS system, but this is a bit contrived even for my tastes.
While BcacheFS and Linux were still in the honeymoon phase in 2023, I decided to jump in with both feet. Today my main system runs a BcacheFS cluster composed of two 6TB hard disks and a 2TB NVMe. This created a >12TiB volume which transparently prioritizes the most frequently accessed files to the NVMe, while allowing me to set replication parameters on a per-directory basis. Aside from the nightmare of configuring the thing to boot, the experience has been stellar. Unfortunately, this is the end of the road. I'll be switching back to a more "conventional" LVM-based setup. I don't consider the potential situation where I need to compile out-of-tree kernel modules on a recovery USB to simply chroot into my system to be workable.
So today I will spend the day doing the whole hermet crab shell exchange with my files as I take the first drive from the cluster offline, reformat it, move files from the rest of the cluster to it, take another drive offline, etc. Wish me luck.
Dare I ask why it didn't turn out so well? It was one system I just never got around to looking at, I was busy being late to learning btrfs at the time.
The creator is unable to work with other people.
He also most likely ruined it for everyone else since now the Linux kernel maintainers are going to be less willing to sponsor up and coming projects.
Literally one of the worst human beings to be around.
Overstreet is uniquely terrible at understanding that the whole world doesn't revolve around himself, but I wouldn't lay the blame for this tendency entirely at his feet. Kernel development is chock full of egotistical personalities who treat their subsystems like personal feifs. People who would rather see innovative projects rot on the vines than make any architectural affordances. The demise of Rust in Linux is a good example.
Rust on Linux has left the experimental stage and is in the kernel proper but it was a bumpy ride. Hector Marcan (former asahi project leader) had to retire from the project because there were dipshits nacking their patches after multiple reviews. Not to mention the other rust for Linux person who resigned due to nontechnical nonsense.
Not to mention that abusive and inflammatory language was and still is tolerated in the mailing list. Tbh Overstreet just seems to be a product of the chud hacker culture that should be purged entirely.
I think a lot of this is downstream from Torvalds just being an unserious asshole, TBH. It is chud hacker culture, absolutely, but only because he fostered and promoted that kind of attitude in Linux development. Competent management could have done the opposite and it wouldn't be nearly as bad.