Apple File System • Hacker News Board

Re: Apple File System

#21

Post by lathiat » Mon, Jun 13, 2016, 7:53 PM UTC

Much like other modern filesystems such as ZFS and BTRFS it supports multiple filesystems in a shared storage space, snapshots, copy-on-write and also has encryption built-in as a first class feature including multiple keys and per-file keys.

There are many limitations in the developer beta so this is clearly still very much a work in progress. Getting these file-systems right is traditionally difficult and can take years (see ZFS, BTRFS) so it will be interesting to see how well it does.

Re: Apple File System

#22

Post by cjbprime » Mon, Jun 13, 2016, 7:54 PM UTC

I hope they don't patent it and go after Linux implementations, as Microsoft did with exfat.

Re: Apple File System

#23

Post by drinchev » Mon, Jun 13, 2016, 7:54 PM UTC

This should've been in the keynote.

Re: Apple File System

#24

Post by 0xCMP » Mon, Jun 13, 2016, 7:55 PM UTC

What about case sensitivity?

Re: Apple File System

#25

Post by 2bitencryption » Mon, Jun 13, 2016, 7:55 PM UTC

lossolo wrote: post #17

Could anyone outline advantages and disadvantages comparing to ext4 or other file systems?

It's not HFS. That in itself is a pretty huge advantage.

Re: Apple File System

#26

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Jun 13, 2016, 7:55 PM UTC

ulfw wrote: post #9

Shipping in 2017? So it won't even be ready for Sierra?

[deleted]

Re: Apple File System

#27

Post by lossolo » Mon, Jun 13, 2016, 7:55 PM UTC

izacus wrote: post #20

jxy wrote: post #15

Just saw a comment in another thread, stating Apple had slipped in improving their Unix layer, and here comes this. New file system is not a joking matter: Microsoft failed to deliver their new FS; Linux took years to go from ext2 to ext3 to ext4, and btrfs is in forever testing; most of *BSD still use their old ones; zfs took decade to become mainstream... The information currently is very scarce on this one, but I…

Didn't Microsoft introduce ReFS with many modern FS features?

They did, it's more fault tolerant than NTFS, i am using it on my Windows machine for my sensitive data with storage spaces.

Re: Apple File System

#28

Post by anc84 » Mon, Jun 13, 2016, 7:56 PM UTC

jasonjei wrote: post #8

mailslot wrote: post #3

Another proprietary filesystem? I was really hoping they'd adopt ZFS fully.

Apple says they intend to open-source the file system in the docs. Open Source : "An open source implementation is not available at this time. Apple plans to document and publish the APFS volume format when Apple File System is released in 2017."

Free software and patent-free or whatever some lawyers call "open"?

Re: Apple File System

#29

Post by spikengineer » Mon, Jun 13, 2016, 7:56 PM UTC

izacus wrote: post #20

jxy wrote: post #15

Just saw a comment in another thread, stating Apple had slipped in improving their Unix layer, and here comes this. New file system is not a joking matter: Microsoft failed to deliver their new FS; Linux took years to go from ext2 to ext3 to ext4, and btrfs is in forever testing; most of *BSD still use their old ones; zfs took decade to become mainstream... The information currently is very scarce on this one, but I…

Didn't Microsoft introduce ReFS with many modern FS features?

They don't consider it primetime yet.

Re: Apple File System

#30

Post by jbergstroem » Mon, Jun 13, 2016, 7:56 PM UTC

No snapshotting yet, can't boot, no migration tools for existing setups (time machine, filevault, fusion). It'd be interesting to see whether their permission changes introduced in 10.11 will travel further down the fs. Also, I don't see any mention of compression like lz4. Lots of work until release in 2017!