Talk:YAFFS

Talk with Charles Manning on 29 September 2006

What is the difference to JFFS/JFFS2 Filesystems? Advantages/Disadvantages especially for use on USB sticks and other memory cards.

Firstly you should not confuse JFFS with JFFS2. JFFS is pretty much obsolete and unsupported. YAFFS and JFFS2 are very different animals too. JFFS2 was originally intended for smaller NOR systems and has been expanded to work with NAND. YAFFS was designed for NAND, but some people have used it for NOR. YAFFS is typically faster than JFFS2, typically uses far less RAM than JFFS2. YAFFS is available for various OSs and is also available under non-GPL licesnses too. YAFFS does various things that JFFS2 does not, including memory mapped writing. I don't know that much about JFFS2, but it has various advantages in being used for NOR too and providing compression. Currently YAFFS does not work on block drivers, but this will likely be available before the end of 2006.

Why is YAFFS not available in actual linux kernel? (2.6.18)

YAFFS is available as a kernel patch that is applied as a patch-in script. This works fine for most people and is a trivial exercise. An effort to get it into the mainline kernel was made in 2010, sponsored by CELF, but ultimately the need for YAFFS to be OS-agnostic was not compatible with changes the kernel FS community wanted before incorporating it, so an impasse was reached, and the code remains externally-maintained.

Will be possible to mount YAFFS filesystem also under the windows OS?

This would require a windows file system driver which is quite an effort to make, AFAIK. problem upgrading fedora

Further talk

OS or not OS

"A variant 'YAFFS/Direct' is used in situations where there is no OS, embedded OSes, and bootloaders: it has the same core filesystem but simpler interfacing to the OS and NAND flash hardware."

So it's used in situations where there is no OS, so that it's easier to interface to this nonexistant OS? --Abdull (talk) 14:09, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

If you are using a filesystem there is always some higher-level code using the filesystem code. I agree it's an awkward sentence, but it includes "embedded OSes" in the 1st phrase so it does make sense. I've rewritten it.

when did that all happened??

  YAFFS (Yet Another Flash File System) was designed and written by Charles Manning, of Whitecliffs, New Zealand, for the company Aleph One

when did he developed the YAFFS 1983, 1992 or 2011??? please add this information — Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.254.66.136 (talk) 16:41, 10 June 2012 (UTC)

OK. I put some dates in, from personal knowledge and http://www.yaffs.net/yaffs-history User: Wookey — Preceding unsigned comment added by 217.140.96.21 (talk) 19:26, 30 August 2013 (UTC)

It is unclear what is licensed under GPL

The article states that "The filesystem is licensed both under the GPL". But a filesystem cannot be under GPL. A document (specifying the file system) can be licensed under GPL and a specific software implementation of the filesystem can licensed under GPL, and even documents describing a specific hardware implementation can be licensed under GPL.

The article is not clear about what exactly is licensed under GPL. I guess it is the case that there is a reference software implementation that is licensed under GPL, but if that is the case I think it is appropriate to have a link to this specific reference implementation. If it is the specification document that is under GPL, I think it is appropriate to have a link to that. In general I think it is appropriate to have a link to whatever it is that is under GPL. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jarl Friis (talk • contribs) 08:13, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

The YAFFS codebase is GPL2 licenced. The term 'filesystem' in this context means 'filesystem implementation', not 'filesystem instance on a storage medium'. This is common usage in developer circles, but should indeed be clarified for something like a wikipedia article. I'll have a go at improving the article. User:wookey — Preceding unsigned comment added by 217.140.96.21 (talk) 19:09, 30 August 2013 (UTC)