[parted-devel] Copyright assignment form for parted

[Phil Susi]

< let's keep this on the list >

On 9/23/2015 7:31 PM, Al Dunsmuir wrote:
> Keeping  it visible would make it straight forward to create new tools
> such  as a apple-map.fsck utility to validate the mac volume partition
> map  and  contained  partitions.  Once  again,  GParted  would support
> calling  that  "check"  function  with little additional fuss. The map
> format is so simple (dumb == reliable), I suspect there is little real
> demand  for  the  ability  to  repair  a  damaged map, only report any
> issues.

How would such a thing make any sense?  It isn't a filesystem.  You
can't have it on a non APM partitioned disk; it only has meaning in
conjunction with the partition table.  Any checking of it should be done
by a partitioning tool accessing the raw disk instead of the partition.

> The  existing  approach  for  other  "special"  partition types within
> gparted  is to recognize them based on output from libparted and other
> system   and   filesystem-specific   tools  -  blkid,  vol_id  (RIP  -
> assimilated by udev (now systemd) and killed).

Speaking of that, doesn't blkid already identify the usage type of this
partition correctly and gparted could use that?

> I  have  verified  using  gdb  that my libparted changes do return the
> correct  sector  used/unuses  geometry  during the initial "apple-map"
> fileystem probe (when called by parted). I've only supported the probe
> function  for  now,  since  resizing the partition map is not terribly
> useful. I modeled this after the "linux-swap" filesystem support.

We only have the probe function these days -- all resize support was
removed in parted 3.0.

> BTW,  Brian has EMail from me with links to the preliminary patches on
> my web site. I can post here once I have the gparted changes complete.
> I  am new to git (and GitHub), and so have getting familiar with those
> as priorities so I can fit in the preferred development process.

Indeed... it is a bit of a learning curve, but well worth it.