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Apple File System

developer.apple.com

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Re: Apple File System

#61

Post by DannyBee »

Twirrim wrote: post #31
cstross wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ZFS on OSX was doomed the moment Oracle bought Sun. If you want to know why, just contemplate the smoking wreckage of the Oracle/Google Java API lawsuit.

ZFS is on a completely open source license. Oracle's beef with Google comes from actions that occurred before Java was open sourced. It's hard to see how the two scenarios are even remotely related, other than "Oracle"

"ZFS is on a completely open source license." This is an ... interesting viewpoint

Oracle's viewpoint on what patents are and are not granted by that license is also interesting (as was Sun's).

Interesting enough that Apple felt they needed to go get a patent license for it, and couldn't come to terms.

http://arstechnica.com/apple/2009/10/apple-abandons-zfs-on-m...

You are correct this happened pre-oracle, but note that it was confirmed by Sun's spokeperson.

(Also note that the national labs, who have been continuing ZFS on linux, are immune to a lot of these issues. Oracle literally cannot get an injunction against them on patent infringement issues, so they are guaranteed they can always work on it)

Re: Apple File System

#63

Post by 0942v8653 »

rbanffy wrote: post #53
quantumhobbit wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was excited to until I read the limitations section. Can't be used as the startup disk and doesn't work with time machine. Hopefully this with change in the next macOs release.

Copy-on-write and snapshots are excellent building blocks for Time Machine, so much in fact that, when it was announced, I suspected it was because of ZFS (which, at the time, was being considered for OSX). It's very likely TM will be adapted to work on it (with about 20 lines of code)

I'm not sure about snapshots, TM is made to work by just copying the directory structure over, and each backup is a fully functioning hierarchy. But cloning is definitely a big deal.

Re: Apple File System

#64

Post by legulere »

cpr wrote: post #2

Siracusa will finally be happy. ;-) Sounds an awful like like ZFS (zero-cost clones, read-only snapshots) but could it be? I would imagine they'd start from scratch to due IP issues. Clearly this is immature technology they want to get out for testing/evaluation before it's fully adopted even into their own products. (See below.) - - - from the release notes - - - As a developer preview of this technology, there are…

Another reason is that ZFS just isn't fitting for Apple devices. It's memory hungry and energy hungry and has several limitations compared to HFS+ like not being able to be resized.

Re: Apple File System

#65

Post by msbarnett »

Twirrim wrote: post #31
cstross wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ZFS on OSX was doomed the moment Oracle bought Sun. If you want to know why, just contemplate the smoking wreckage of the Oracle/Google Java API lawsuit.

ZFS is on a completely open source license. Oracle's beef with Google comes from actions that occurred before Java was open sourced. It's hard to see how the two scenarios are even remotely related, other than "Oracle"

Gruber, who usually has good inside sources, on Apple dropping ZFS[1]:

> Word on the street in Cupertino is that dropping ZFS wasn’t an engineering decision, but a legal one, and it might have had something to do with Oracle’s acquisition of Sun. I don’t know if it was a problem with the terms of the CDDL license, general distrust/dislike for Oracle, or what — only that the word came down from legal that ZFS was a no-go.

Apple has a notoriously paranoid pack of legal sharks, and they clearly felt uncomfortable with something about the ZFS legal situation.

[1]: http://daringfireball.net/linked/2009/10/23/zfs

Re: Apple File System

#66

Post by whorleater »

lewisl9029 wrote: post #47
xd1936 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, this is a developer preview. Final release in 2017 will surely make this FS the default.

That's what people were hoping for with ReFS from Microsoft, which released years ago, but that still hasn't happened yet.

Apple is far more willing to switch to more newer technologies than Microsoft is.

Re: Apple File System

#67

Post by geodel »

drinchev wrote: post #58
waterphone wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The keynote was for consumers and the press. The 2 PM PT Platforms State of the Union is for developers and will likely go into this more, and if not there is a session tomorrow specifically about it.

Still... Marketing fully-encrypted snapshot-featured filesystem with focus on SSD / Flash, would make much more impact than having "native-tabs" for apps on an event like that. Anyway I'm not a specialist, just another IT guy, so maybe I'm too opinionated to argue more.

As another IT guy I found quote from Deepak Chopra a low point in Keynote :-)

Re: Apple File System

#68

Post by DannyB2 »

Complain if you want, but you seem to forget that it is from Apple. And that makes it somehow better with magical goodness that nobody else could attain. Apple's engineers are not mere humans like every other 'ordinary' tech company would hire. /s

Re: Apple File System

#69

Post by Analemma_ »

lewisl9029 wrote: post #47
xd1936 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, this is a developer preview. Final release in 2017 will surely make this FS the default.

That's what people were hoping for with ReFS from Microsoft, which released years ago, but that still hasn't happened yet.

btrfs was available in the Linux kernel in 2009, but didn't see production release in the tinkerer-friendly distros until 2012 and in an enterprise distro until 2015. These things take time: filesystems need to be absolutely bulletproof, especially in the consumer space where (unlike Linux) most users will have no idea what to do if something goes wrong. I'd say Microsoft is still on schedule.

Re: Apple File System

#70

Post by Philipp__ »

Wow! This makes me feel good, maybe Apple gets it that many of it's users use it's devices because they present proper UNIX desktop environment. And that environment needs to be cherished and it needs to evolve.

This is not a small thing. We had nice visual overhaul 2 years ago, now Apple needs to pick it up on under the hood level.

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