Re: partman, growlight, discoverable partitions, and fun

[Wouter Verhelst <wouter@debian.org>]

On Mon, Sep 27, 2021 at 03:18:48PM +0200, John Paul Adrian Glaubitz wrote:
> 
> 
> > On Sep 27, 2021, at 2:25 PM, Luca Boccassi <bluca@debian.org> wrote:
> > 
> > Even if that interpretation would work as an excuse to never do
> > anything, and I'm not really sure it does, this specification has been
> > published in 2014 [0] so even by Debian standard it's old stuff.
> 
> That’s not what I said so. You’re trying to dismiss my opinion as completely invalid now by trying to frame it such that I am against progress. I am not.
> 
> > It's
> > older than Debian Jessie, which was EOL'd last year. If libparted can't
> > keep up with 7 years old stuff that in the meantime was implemented in
> > util-linux's (which is a truly universal tool) in 2014, gdisk in 2019,
> > and so on, then to me it sounds like a tool in maintenance mode:
> > perfectly fine and adequate for existing tools and programs, but not
> > quite the best choice for new tools developed from scratch.
> 
> Whether a tool that was developed new from scratch is automatically better is
> not a given. The burden of proof is on the person trying to introduce the new
> software, not on the people maintaining the current set of software.

I think you're reading too much into the question here. The whole
*point* of Nick asking whether people would be opposed to that is
precisely *because* he wants to provide proof that his solution is
better than parted.

You've shown some things that are missing, and his immediate answer is
"ah, right, I'll need to add that then, but would need some assistance
to test that properly".

What's the problem with that?

Nobody is proposing to replace partman tomorrow.

Nobody is proposing to replace partman without testing the replacement.

It's also perfectly possible to imagine a transition period where both
partitioners are supported. That's the whole point of making d-i
modular: you can replace one component with another, and it adds new
features that support more use cases without killing off the older ones
because you can always ask for the other module. In fact, if memory
serves well, partman is the *second* partitioner that was written for
d-i, the first one having been replaced after just such a transition.

IOW, chill out, nobody's going to kill off partman unless there's
something that's *actually* better than partman.

-- 
     w@uter.{be,co.za}
wouter@{grep.be,fosdem.org,debian.org}