[Feature request]: Support for better file systems

[TriVoxel]

Describe the feature

FAT32 and ExFAT are really prone to corruption. I was hoping we could get some more resilient filesystems supported. For example, I think something like EXT4, BTRFS, and/or NTFS would be a lot more reliable. Ideally, we'd get something with journaling.

Also, I'm not sure if this is more of a Swiss thing or a GCLoader thing, but I feel this could be especially useful for fast devices like GCLoader or CubeODE where more ambitious homebrew apps could take advantage of that extra speed and filesystem durability do use the SD card for SWAP, effectively extending the memory of the system.

I've come to ask for this after speaking to the developer of the Meese Engine, a homebrew voxel engine with infinite world generation (similar to Minecraft) designed to run on GameCube, Dreamcast, and PC. They've expressed the need for a more resilient journaling filesystem to prevent corruption because their game engine needs to read and write a lot of data to stream in world data. They're worried that FAT32 will likely corrupt and ruin players' save data, especially if there is a freeze, crash, or power loss.

I also have an issue with FAT32 and ExFAT being the only supported file systems because I know they are prone to corruption from experience, but also they are slow, limit us for file names, and they max out at 2 TB. With the M.2 Loader on the horizon, it would really be nice to remove that limitation. I would personally like drives >2 TB because I convert movies and store and watch them on my GameCube and bigger drives means more games and more movies.

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[Extrems]

NTFS is already readily implementable, but its use for homebrew is limited as you're bound to the terms of the GPLv2 license.

Also, exFAT supports >2 TB just fine with 512-byte sector disks, and has been tested with them.

[TriVoxel]

I see. Well, something like BTRFS or EXT4 should have compatible licenses and they’re much better file systems than NTFS. I think there’s even a way to mount EXT4 partitions on Windows and macOS.

[Extrems]

The implementations for those are also licensed under the GPL.

[TriVoxel]

Oh, I see. So if it's GPL it can't be included in Swiss?

[Extrems]

Swiss is perfectly fine as it is GPLv2 to begin with, but it couldn't be used in a proprietary game.

[TriVoxel]

Would the homebrew software need to implement the file system to work? I was under the impression Swiss was handling the filesystem stuff or somehow abstracting it. At any rate, their game is unreleased but I imagine it will be open source when it's released, possibly under a compatible license.

[Extrems]

Swiss handles nothing. It's all inside libogc2.

[TriVoxel]

So essentially, the new file systems would need to be added to LibOGC2, then all homebrew software would need to be re-compiled with the latest LibOGC2 to support the new file system? I mean, that doesn't sound too bad honestly, as a surprising amount of homebrew is still maintained.

[Extrems]

Yes, and libntfs is already available to implement NTFS, and is used by CleanRip today.

There was a ext4 implementation, but the code quality was too poor.

[Extrems]

I'm making progress using the BSD-3-Clause subset of lwext4, but I'm having doubts about its utility as it's effectively limited to ext3 features.

[TriVoxel]

@Extrems That’s cool! I’m trying to figure out using e2tools libraries from Linux (GPL2) to create libext. I have a working prototype in Swiss by extending libogc2. Once I get it working more reloably, I will see if I can get it working in libdvm as well. I am testing it on GCLoader and it seems promising! I’m able to mount and browse and file manage an EXT2 partition, but it should also work for 3 and 4

[TriVoxel]

By the way, that dev I talked to isn’t using libogc2, they’re using KalistiOS or something. It’s a port from the Dreamcast I guess, new SDK getting ported to GC.