BFS is coming out of the mainline tree as part of the Linux 7.4 merge window, among the first changes Linus Torvalds has landed after opening the window with a round of pull requests overnight — the latest obsolete file-system to be dropped from the kernel tree, according to Phoronix.
The file-system itself is not a household name: BFS is legacy code inherited from SCO's UnixWare, a niche offering that never found a wide audience once it entered the kernel. Its removal this cycle says more about how the tree stays trimmed than about anything developers are likely to miss.
That is the angle worth following through 7.4 rather than BFS on its own. Merge-window deletions tend to move quietly — the pull request carries the change, a short interval is reserved for objections, and if no one volunteers to maintain the code, it goes. The queue Torvalds is working combines incoming feature pulls with outgoing deletions, and BFS is the first clear instance of the latter in this cycle. It amounts to an informal process of attrition rather than a scheduled deprecation: steady weeding of the kind that stops the kernel tree from hosting indefinitely maintained code with few users.
The queue for 7.4 is still being processed, so further removals could surface before the window closes. Anyone tracking upstream Linux would do well to watch the pattern rather than the individual file-system.
For teams planning around 7.4, the practical implication is simple: treat BFS as unsupported once this cycle lands. Organisations that maintain their own internal kernels over long lifecycles will not feel the change immediately, but it sets a marker for the next time those kernels are rebased — a prompt to check that ageing storage and embedded systems are not carrying forward dependencies that no one upstream is prepared to keep alive.
隨著 Linux 7.4 合併視窗開啟，BFS 檔案系統正被移出主線（mainline）代碼樹，這是 Linus Torvalds 在通宵接收一批 pull request 開啟視窗後最早落實的變更之一，也是最新一個從 kernel 代碼樹中被剔除的過時檔案系統，據 Phoronix 報道。
這個檔案系統本身並非廣為人知：BFS 是從 SCO 的 UnixWare 繼承下來的舊有代碼，屬小眾產品，自納入 kernel 後從未獲得廣泛採用。它在本輪更新中被移除，與其說是開發者會覺得可惜，不如說更能反映主線代碼樹如何持續保持精簡。
這才是值得跟隨 7.4 整個週期觀察的角度，而非 BFS 本身。合併視窗內的刪除變更通常悄無聲息地進行——pull request 載有變更，預留短暫時間讓外界提出異議，若無人自願維護相關代碼，變更就會落實。Torvalds 正在處理的佇列結合了 incoming feature pull 與 outgoing deletion，而 BFS 是本輪首個明確的刪除個案。這其實是一種非正式的逐步淘汰過程，而非預先安排的棄用計劃（deprecation），屬於持續進行的除草工序，以免 kernel 代碼樹長期收留僅有少數使用者、卻仍被不斷維護的代碼。
7.4 的佇列仍在處理中，因此在合併視窗關閉前可能還會有更多移除項目浮現。任何追蹤上游 Linux 的人士，與其關注個別檔案系統，不如留意這一種整體模式。
對於圍繞 7.4 作出規劃的團隊，實際影響十分簡單：一旦本輪更新落實，即應視 BFS 為不受支援。自行維護內部 kernel、生命週期較長的機構不會立即感受到變化，但這為下次這些 kernel 進行 rebase 時設下了一個標記——提醒相關人員檢查老化的儲存系統與嵌入式系統，是否仍帶有上游已無人願意持續維護的依賴項目（dependencies）。