[Android-tools-devel] Bug#741510: android-tools-fsutils: make_ext4fs compiled without -DANDROID lacks important functionality

[Leon Winter]

As explained by the Google developers in the commit message before, the option
"-a" applies file permissions and ownerships according to the moint point
specified.
When working on such Android ext4 image files, one tend to extract them, make
modifications and bundle them back together. However since extraction is
normally done without root permissions, the extracted files cannot be
chown'ed/chmod'ed properly. Yet such ownership/file permissions are very
important for a root filesystem to work properly.

> Am I correct that the -a option for android still cannot be made functional
> in this case by rebuilding the package with this enabled.

I enabled the option on my build and was able to assemble a factoryfs image
(Android rootfs) which worked on my phone (same outcome as two years ago).
Like I pointed out above, when operating without root permissions, one normally
extracts without keeping all the file ownerships/permissions properly so on
re-assembly this lost information need to be recovered (which is the
functionality "-a").

> Confused at this point as to whether this is an upstream issue or?

Since this package is called "android-" it suggests it should be useful for
Android development. It is only of use when enabling this option.

I don't know why Philipp was unsuccessful re-assembling his factoryfs. It could
be a different bug.