Re: Dropping old fdisk utilities
On 09/22/2017 04:13 AM, Finn Thain wrote:
>> mac-fdisk in particular is no longer needed but it can cause trouble
>> with debian-installer when the udebs are outdated or broken.
>>
>
> If the package gets broken and if no-one will maintain it, then I won't
> object to its removal. Otherwise, why not cross that bridge when we come
> to it? I'm willing to fix more mac-fdisk bugs if need be. What is needed
> to keep up with changes in APT?
The main problem is that mac-fdisk is not a package that is built on any
of Debian's release architectures. This normally means you cannot upload
a package through the regular FTP mechanism as the Debian Archive Kit (DAK)
will kick any package source which does not produce binary packages on
release architectures.
It still works at the moment because powerpc still happens to be built
on the official buildds and its packages are being stored on the main
FTP servers and not Debian Ports. So, technically, powerpc is still a
release architecture, it's just no longer part of Debian testing.
However, we don't know how long this status will continue to remain
in the future and the moment powerpc is removed from the official
infrastructure, you will no longer be able to upload new versions
of the mac-fdisk source package as DAK will kick the package shortly
after no binary packages are built on the release architecture
buildds.
>> While amiga-fdisk is not used in debian-installer, we actually don't
>> need it either. parted works just fine for partitioning Amiga hard
>> disks.
>>
>> So, I would be in favor of removing both amiga-fdisk and mac-fdisk.
>>
>> Opinions?
>>
>
> I can say that one advantage of mac-fdisk over the other tools is that it
> works the same as pdisk on Mac OS X. So the risk of catastrophic operator
> error is reduced. Though it appears that the mac-fdisk code hasn't tracked
> Apple's pdisk code. Is there a licensing issue?
I think parted has a much larger group of users, more documentation and
has received more testing. With gparted, it also has a very clean and
sensible UI, so I think people should be encouraged to use the modern
tools and also encouraged to report bugs and help developers improve
the code.
Laurent Vivier recently fixed some issues in the Mac partition table
code in parted and I think he will be happy to do that in the foreseeable
future.
> There is a risk that some quirks in the APM format, Mac OS, or Apple boot
> ROMs are not handled by other tools. I don't know. And I don't know that
> parted developers intend to match pdisk functionality in general. Given
> those uncertainties, I can't offer an informed opinion.
Well, yes, but all those things are issues that can be resolved, if necessary.
Sticking to old and unmaintained software is never a good idea. It causes
additional overhead and is a possible source of bugs. For example, mac-fdisk
just recently broke debian-installer on m68k and I had to fix it manually
in order to get the installer working.
The problem was that mac-fdisk still ships udebs for debian-installer although
these are no longer used as debian-installer always uses parted for partitioning
hard disks during installation these days. Yet, any udebs available for a given
architecture are pulled in during installation and can therefore cause issues.
So, mac-fdisk broke debian-installer even though it's not even needed by
d-i anymore. And that is one of the typical effects you see with software
that has been unmaintained for a long time.
Adrian
--
.''`. John Paul Adrian Glaubitz
: :' : Debian Developer - glaubitz@debian.org
`. `' Freie Universitaet Berlin - glaubitz@physik.fu-berlin.de
`- GPG: 62FF 8A75 84E0 2956 9546 0006 7426 3B37 F5B5 F913
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