[parted-devel] parted-1.8.0rc2 is coming up

[David Cantrell]

Hello everyone!

I wanted to send out an email to let everyone know how the 1.8.0rc2 
release candidate is going and what to expect from me.  First, my 
apologies for disappearing from email for about a week or so.  I had to 
go out of town on business and then we (at Red Hat) were in freeze mode 
for Fedora Core 6.  That has taken a lot of my time.  *BUT*, please know 
that parted is one my responsibilities at Red Hat now, so it won't be 
forgotten.

I also wanted to thank everyone who tested out 1.8.0rc1 and sent in 
feedback and/or patches.  Very much appreciated.

Here's where I am for 1.8.0rc2:

1) The gparted project has a compile problem on Slackware systems.  This 
is most likely caused by a mistake in one of the autoconf/automake 
files.  I'm going to have to install Slackware and look at it from 
there.  Should be an easy fix.  The problem is the posix_memalign() 
function is not getting defined for some reason.  At least one more user 
reported this, so I suspect it's autoconf/automake problems.

2) 
http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/parted-devel/2006-September/000199.html
Including this patch from Debarshi Ray.

3) Including some other UI patches from Debarshi Ray that display model, 
manufacturer, and transport.  I have the patches, will include.

4) Debarshi Ray also reported a problem with building on FC5.  I'll test 
again and make sure that works.

5) I have found and fixed a problem where libparted reads sectors 0-127 
outside of a partition boundary on 64-bit PowerPC systems.  I've fixed 
that and will include the patch in 1.8.0rc2.

6) Debarshi Ray and Leslie Polzer were talking to me about /dev/mapper 
support.  I mentioned that I have a full patch for that against parted 
that I include in the FC and RHEL parted packages which allows parted to 
read/write /dev/mapper devices.  I have to conditionalize it before I 
will include it (right now, it assumes you have libdevmapper, which you 
may not).  I'll toss this patch to the list before committing it so I 
can get some feedback on it.

7) Moving all of the 'rc' tarballs from ftp.gnu.org to alpha.gnu.org.


OK, that's my plan for 1.8.0rc2.  Let me get this stuff out, but if you 
have any patches or questions regarding the issues above, let me hear them.

I am estimating a couple days for myself to get things integrated and 
tested and such.  I plan on uploading 1.8.0rc2 on Sunday evening my time 
(Eastern Standard Time, GMT-5).

-- 
David Cantrell
Red Hat / Westford, MA