[Parted-maintainers] Bug#615124: parted: cobwebby package description

[Justin B Rye]

Package: parted
Version: 2.3-5
Severity: minor
Tags: patch

The summary of supported functionality is dangerously obsolete.  My
attention was drawn to this package by the ancient libreiserfs
references, but there's a more important problem that pushes this bug
above my usual level of "wishlist".

> Description: The GNU Parted disk partition resizing program

(Well, about half of this is redundant!)

>  GNU Parted is a program that allows you to create, destroy,
>  resize, move and copy hard disk partitions. This is useful

(These days I need a partition-editor for a USB device as often as for
a hard disk.)

>  for creating space for new operating systems, reorganising
>  disk usage, and copying data to new hard disks. This package
>  contains the Parted binary and manual page.

I notice that the other packages in the set have both the above line
*and* one saying it contains the shared library or whatever.  Instead
I've split the above sentence out and added a pointer to parted-doc.

>  .
>  Parted currently supports DOS, Mac, Sun, BSD, GPT, MIPS and
>  PC98 disklabels/partition tables, as well as a 'loop' (raw

Using the BSDism "disklabel" as if it was the main way of referring to
a partition table is distinctly misleading; GNU/Linux users are liable
to think in terms of either e2label or cd-circleprint!  Couldn't we
use "partitioning formats" as a generic term?

>  disk) type which allows use on RAID/LVM. Filesystems which
>  are currently fully supported are ext2, ext3, fat (FAT16

No mention of ext4... indeed, the manpage still says that ext3 support
is incomplete, and the Debian Wiki mumbles something about ext2 being
broken.  Reading the changelog on the other hand I see hints at
support for ext4, ZFS and Btrfs detection, and HFS creation.

>  and FAT32), ReiserFS (with libreiserfs) and linux-swap.
>  Parted can also detect and remove HFS (Mac OS), JFS, NTFS,
>  UFS (Sun and HP), XFS and ASFS/AFFS/APFS (Amiga) filesystems,

In not-quite-alphabetical order...  Oh, and given that UFS is used in
PlayStations and Debian GNU/kFreeBSD installs, why does it get
credited to dead/dying unices?  My patch avoids the issue.

>  but cannot create, resize or check these filesystems yet.

So this is claiming Parted *can* be used to manipulate the "fully
supported" file systems.  However, hidden away in parted-doc is an
upstream README declaring that *all* filesystem creation and
modification via Parted is deprecated!  Shouldn't major shrinkages in
supported functionality like this be announced in parted's NEWS.Debian
where apt-listchanges will display it, or at least here in the blurb?
Yes, the binary will output warnings when I try to run it, but I want
to be told that parted is unsafe as a rescue utility *before* I find
myself relying on it...

This is the part that promotes the bug from wishlist to at least
minor, since the package description is actively advertising
functionality that it should instead be warning users against.

>  .
>  Note that ReiserFS support is only enabled if you install
>  the libreiserfs0.3-0 package. Since libreiserfs0.3-0 has been
>  removed from sarge, ReiserFS support is not compiled in the
>  default package.

This mention of wheezy -4 is what first attracted my attention.
I've simply thrown out the ReiserFS references.

>  .
>  The nature of this software means that any bugs could cause
>  massive data loss. While there are no known bugs at the moment,

What, not even documentation bugs?  Poorly phrased.

>  they could exist, so please back up all important files before
>  running it, and do so at your own risk.

(For some reason all of the other package descriptions in the parted
control file repeat all of the stuff about supported file systems
*except* parted-doc, which is where I might have expected it to go
into the most detail.  To reduce future maintenance overhead I have
trimmed all the packages other than parted itself to use only the
first paragraph as boilerplate.)

Unfortunately I can't find a canonical summary of what's currently
supported, so I'm not really expecting my patch to be perfect, but
here's my best guess:

 Description: disk partition manipulator
  GNU Parted is a program that allows you to create, destroy, resize,
  move, and copy disk partitions. This is useful for creating space
  for new operating systems, reorganizing disk usage, and copying data
  to new hard disks.
  .
  This package contains the binary and manual page. Further
  documentation is available in parted-doc.
  .
  Parted currently supports DOS, Mac, Sun, BSD, GPT, MIPS, and PC98
  partitioning formats, as well as a "loop" (raw disk) type which
  allows use on RAID/LVM. It can detect and remove ASFS/AFFS/APFS,
  Btrfs, ext2/3/4, FAT16/32, HFS, JFS, linux-swap, UFS, XFS, and ZFS
  file systems. Parted also has the ability to create and modify file
  systems of some of these types, but using it to perform file system
  operations is now deprecated.
  .
  The nature of this software means that any bugs could cause massive
  data loss. While there are no such bugs known at the moment, they
  could exist, so please back up all important files before running
  it, and do so at your own risk.

-- System Information:
Debian Release: 6.0
  APT prefers stable
  APT policy: (500, 'stable'), (200, 'squeeze-updates')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)

Kernel: Linux 2.6.32-5-amd64 (SMP w/2 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=en_GB.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_GB.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash

Versions of packages parted depends on:
ii  libblkid1                 2.17.2-9       block device id library
ii  libc6                     2.11.2-10      Embedded GNU C Library: Shared lib
ii  libdevmapper1.02.1        2:1.02.48-5    The Linux Kernel Device Mapper use
ii  libncurses5               5.7+20100313-5 shared libraries for terminal hand
ii  libparted0debian1         2.3-5          The GNU Parted disk partitioning s
ii  libreadline6              6.1-3          GNU readline and history libraries
ii  libuuid1                  2.17.2-9       Universally Unique ID library

parted recommends no packages.

Versions of packages parted suggests:
ii  parted-doc                    2.3-5      The GNU Parted disk partition resi

-- no debconf information

-- 
JBR
Ankh kak! (Ancient Egyptian blessing)
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