exFAT specification did go open source

[MartinX3]

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/fileio/exfat-specification

Maybe useful for you :)

[relan]

Wow. I didn't expect this happening ever. Thanks for letting know.

I'll leave this issue open because some things will probably need to be adjusted in the code.

[ibakirov]

https://cloudblogs.microsoft.com/opensource/2019/08/28/exfat-linux-kernel/

Main news from Microsoft about opening exFAT specification

[pali]

Please note that newly released specification is incomplete. There is e.g. missing important information about TexFAT.

[MartinX3]

@relan
https://lkml.org/lkml/2019/8/28/827
Submitting it into the Linux kernel is already in the works.
The guys are faaaaaast.

[MartinX3]

https://github.com/arter97/exfat-linux

Maybe useful, too

[MartinX3]

https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/tree/drivers/staging/exfat
Aaaand here we go

[MartinX3]

https://itsfoss.com/linux-kernel-5-4/
exFAT hits kernel 5.4

[MartinX3]

5.7 kernel got the stable exFAT implementation.
and 5.8 get more fixes
https://lkml.org/lkml/2020/6/9/166

[MartinX3]

Aaand the exFAT filesystem userspace utilities for kernel 5.7
https://github.com/exfatprogs/exfatprogs

[albertvaka]

This means we currently have two open source implementations, right? Is there some utility in maintaining both? I'm asking honestly to better understand the current situation, given both seem to receive regular updates and it seems weird to me to not join efforts instead.

[relan]

This means we currently have two open source implementations, right? Is there some utility in maintaining both?

I think the answer is purely technical. The exFAT FS implementation in Linux is limited to Linux, while fuse-exfat supports other operating systems

The case with utilities is more complicated. Exfat-utils in this project are a by-product of fuse-exfat, they share a big amount of code with fuse-exfat (see libexfat subdir). So they require almost no maintenence.