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Apple File System

developer.apple.com

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Re: Apple File System

#231

Post by spott »

entee wrote: post #60
imglorp wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Will they deploy it case insensitive, still?

Presumably as with today, you'll have the option. I don't have a strong opinion on case sensitivity of file names, but I suspect they'll keep it case insensitive by default. I think for the average non-technical user that two files, "MyFile.txt" and "myfile.txt", being different could lead to some confusion, and Apple historically has apparently considered that confusion unacceptable.

I believe the problem is also present for a large amount of third party software, making the move to case sensitive drives pretty hard to do:

[0] https://helpx.adobe.com/creative-suite/kb/error-case-sensiti... [1] http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/192185/os-x-case-se... [2] http://dcatteeu.github.io/article/2015/12/31/case-sensitive-...

Re: Apple File System

#232

Post by spott »

entee wrote: post #60
imglorp wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Will they deploy it case insensitive, still?

Presumably as with today, you'll have the option. I don't have a strong opinion on case sensitivity of file names, but I suspect they'll keep it case insensitive by default. I think for the average non-technical user that two files, "MyFile.txt" and "myfile.txt", being different could lead to some confusion, and Apple historically has apparently considered that confusion unacceptable.

I believe the problem is also present for a large amount of third party software, making the move to case sensitive drives pretty hard to do:

[0] https://helpx.adobe.com/creative-suite/kb/error-case-sensiti... [1] http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/192185/os-x-case-se... [2] http://dcatteeu.github.io/article/2015/12/31/case-sensitive-...

Re: Apple File System

#233

Post by tbrock »

mbakke wrote: post #125
dmix wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speaking of which, is there any other good FS to use for desktop Linux (on an SSD on ArchLinux) or is Ext4 still the recommended standard?

Depends on your needs. Stability, reliability: ext4/XFS CoW, snapshots, multi-drive FS: ZFS/btrfs SSD speed, longevity: F2FS

Without getting stability and reliability correct don't bother with the other features. What good is it if the filesystem handles oodles of drives if none of them have any of the data you put on them?

Re: Apple File System

#235

Post by PhantomGremlin »

karlshea wrote: post #97
killercup wrote: post #45

> Flash / SSD Optimization I.e., a "unique copy-on-write design" > Space Sharing Basically, ZFS datasets. > Snapshots If those can be sent: Finally Time Machine done right. > The AFP protocol is deprecated and cannot be used to share APFS formatted volumes. Interesting. > 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 r…

> > Snapshots > If those can be sent: Finally Time Machine done right. If this ends up being true I can't wait—it's so frustrating watching tiny incremental backups take forever over the network. It seems like "Preparing" and "Cleaning up" take longer than moving the data.

it's so frustrating watching tiny incremental backups take forever over the network

While waiting for APFS to become stable, buy Carbon Copy Cloner. $40. I love it. It's fundamentally rsync, but tailored to OS X. For personal use a single license covers an entire household.

Every night CCC fires up on each laptop and each does an incremental clone to its own dedicated directory on my desktop machine. This clone is usually less than a few GB and takes about a minute to run. CCC doesn't have to be run daily, it can be told to run hourly instead.

Time Machine running on my desktop then copies everything off to yet another disk.

So my backup environment is:

   each laptop uses CCC to periodically clone to desktop

   the clones on the desktop are "traditional",
   CCC is told not to keep its own copies of modified files

   desktop runs time machine,
   makes hourly backups to a TM disk,
   old versions of files can be found there
This gives me 3 copies of all data on each laptop:

1) on the laptop

2) on the desktop

3) on the desktop's Time Machine Volume

If you create your users in the same order on each machine, or later go back and change the User IDs to match (under advanced options in Users and Groups) then the uids will match everywhere, and all files can be easily browsed in each location, with all file permissions intact.

Re: Apple File System

#236

Post by astrange »

killercup wrote: post #45

> Flash / SSD Optimization I.e., a "unique copy-on-write design" > Space Sharing Basically, ZFS datasets. > Snapshots If those can be sent: Finally Time Machine done right. > The AFP protocol is deprecated and cannot be used to share APFS formatted volumes. Interesting. > 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 r…

> Famously missing, but not the hardest thing to add considering all the features above: Compression (which HFS+ supports!)

HFS+ supports compression, so compression is not a new feature, so it's not on the New Features page. No problem!

Re: Apple File System

#237

Post by ahl »

watersb wrote: post #189
ahl wrote: post #161

The spartan description of APFS certainly sounds like the (partial) feature list for ZFS--the comparisons made in the comments here are on-point. ZFS though took around 5 years to ship and, arguably, another 5-10 to get right. I say this having shipped multiple products based on ZFS, writing code in ZFS, and diagnosing production problems with it. On-disk consistency ("crash protection"), snapshots, encryption, and t…

Yes. I was a heavy user of ZFS on Mac OS X back then. Was on the developer mailing list for that implentation, submitting bugs and talking to Apple developers working like mad to ship it. Then Steve Jobs' buddy Larry bought Sun, and licensing of ZFS became basically impossible to sort out on time. So they dropped it. Was that 2007 or 2009?

The Sun acquisition was announced in 2009 and closed in 2010. It may have been related, but I have my own suspicions about about what caused Apple to jettison their port.

Re: Apple File System

#238

Post by ahl »

mioelnir wrote: post #196
ahl wrote: post #161

The spartan description of APFS certainly sounds like the (partial) feature list for ZFS--the comparisons made in the comments here are on-point. ZFS though took around 5 years to ship and, arguably, another 5-10 to get right. I say this having shipped multiple products based on ZFS, writing code in ZFS, and diagnosing production problems with it. On-disk consistency ("crash protection"), snapshots, encryption, and t…

Between the ZFS-like features and the advertised "novel copy-on-write metadata" scheme, I would not be surprised if it was partially based on DragonFly's HAMMER/HAMMER2 filesystem.

It would be a strange kind of NIH that excluded ZFS but welcomed HAMMER...

Re: Apple File System

#239

Post by feld »

ahl wrote: post #238
mioelnir wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Between the ZFS-like features and the advertised "novel copy-on-write metadata" scheme, I would not be surprised if it was partially based on DragonFly's HAMMER/HAMMER2 filesystem.

It would be a strange kind of NIH that excluded ZFS but welcomed HAMMER...

different licensing and HAMMER demands significantly less memory
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