Compatibility and Integration

Can I use mergerfs without SnapRAID? SnapRAID without mergerfs?

Yes. They are completely unrelated pieces of software.

Can mergerfs run via Docker, Podman, Kubernetes, etc.

Yes. With Docker you'll need to include --cap-add=SYS_ADMIN --device=/dev/fuse --security-opt=apparmor:unconfined or similar with other container runtimes. You should also be running it as root or given sufficient caps to change user and group identity as well as have root like filesystem permissions.

Keep in mind that you MUST consider identity when using containers. For example: supplemental groups will be picked up from the container unless you properly manage users and groups by sharing relevant /etc files or by using some other means to share identity across containers. Similarly, if you use "rootless" containers and user namespaces to do uid/gid translations you MUST consider that while managing shared files.

Also, as mentioned by hotio, with Docker you should probably be mounting with bind-propagation set to slave.

Does mergerfs support CoW / copy-on-write / writes to read-only filesystems?

Not in the sense of a filesystem like BTRFS or ZFS nor in the overlayfs or aufs sense. It does offer a cow-shell like hard link breaking (copy to temp file then rename over original) which can be useful when wanting to save space by hardlinking duplicate files but wish to treat each name as if it were a unique and separate file.

If you want to write to a read-only filesystem you should look at overlayfs. You can always include the overlayfs mount into a mergerfs pool.