Bug#557892: RFH: hfsprogs -- mkfs and fsck for HFS and HFS+ file systems
Package: wnpp
Severity: normal
I would kindly request assistance with maintaining the hfsprogs package,
which is a pair of programs for mkfs and fsck for HFS/HFS+ filesystems.
The package is developed by Apple, but only a small fraction of the
package is actually used. The current packages in Debian use source code
from Apple's MacOS X 10.4 version (codenamed Tiger).
The original patches adapting things to Linux that I got were monolithic
and I cleaned them up, broken them up (for ease of future work) and
were ported forward against some 5 or 6 (I forgot how many) upstream
releases, but still in the 10.4.x branch of their filesystem.
Now, things are getting cleaner and I have started porting the patches
against the first MacOS X 10.5 version, and most of the patches are
already appliable against that version (with the exception of one
patch).
The package has no bugs in its current version, has no lintian
warnings/errors (when using a new lintian version) and is packaged with
format "3.0 (quilt)".
In other words, it is in a mostly sane situation, but as is a tautology,
things can be improved.
There are some things to do and I would kindly appreciate some help with
the forward porting the patches.
The package long description:
,----
| The HFS+ file system used by Apple Computer for their Mac OS is
| supported by the Linux kernel. Apple provides mkfs and fsck for
| HFS+ with the Unix core of their operating system, Darwin.
| .
| This package is a port of Apple's tools for HFS+ filesystems.
| .
| For users, HFS+ seems to be a good compromise to carry files between
| MacOS X and Linux Machines, as HFS+ doesn't suffer the problems of
| FAT32 like:
| .
| * huge space waste (in slack space as devices grow faster);
| * ability to create files that are more than 4GB in size (especially
| good for those working with multimedia and that need to carry large
| ISO files);
| * ability to use case preserving (and even sensitivity!);
| * ability to use uid's and gid's on the filesystem.
| .
| Users in general can enjoy such benefits since it is expected to have
| more HFS+ filesystems in use, as Apple has announced Macintoshes for
| ix86-64, besides the filesystem being already supported by PowerPC
| systems since the beginning.
`----
Regards,
--
Rogério Brito : rbrito@{ime.usp.br,gmail.com} : GPG key 1024D/7C2CAEB8
http://rb.doesntexist.org : Packages for LaTeX : algorithms.berlios.de
DebianQA: http://qa.debian.org/developer.php?login=rbrito%40ime.usp.br
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