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Re: RFS: hfsprogs - mkfs and fsck for HFS and HFS+ file systems



Hi, Paul.

It is quite nice that you have shown some interest in hfsprogs. I will
explain what you have asked.

On Jul 18 2007, Paul Wise wrote:
> On 7/18/07, Rogério Brito <rbrito@ime.usp.br> wrote:
>> I made a package for creating and checking HFS(+) filesystems. The basic
>> information about this package is here
>
> What is the relationship between hfsprogs and the existing hfsplus and
> hfsutils packages?

The relationship is simple: both hfsplus and hfsutils work in the same
kind of way that mtools (for reading FAT/VFAT filesystems work).

In a more precise way, mtools is a set of pure userland tools that are
meant to manipulate floppy disks (and some filesystems made in regular
files) so that you don't need kernel support for such filesystems. You
can use mdir, mcopy, mdel etc on floppies.

With hfsutils, you can perform those same things on HFS filesystems.
With hfsplus, you can perform those same things on HFS+ filesystems.

On the other hand, your applications won't be able to write directly to
such filesystems if you use only those tools.

Fortunately, the Linux kernel already has modules for both hfs and
hfsplus filesystems. But here is where hfsprogs come into play: there is
no current way of creating such a filesystem and, more importantly,
there is no way to *repair* such filesystems (fsck).

The package hfsprogs (which I would sincerely like to call hfsutils, but
the name is already taken) provides two utilities: fsck and mkfs for
*both* kinds of filesystems (HFS and HFS+) and is developed directly by
Apple, for inclusion in their operating system, Darwin.

Actually, these tools also support HFSX, which are case sensitive
versions of HFS+ and also support journaling (but the current Linux
kernel modules don't support writing to a journaled version of HFS+,
unfortunately).

> Perhaps all three could be consolidated into one package (upstream if
> possible)?

I don't know exactly if this would be possible due to the different
paradigms and the different licences that they may have.


Thank you very much for asking me. I hope that I made the distinction
between the packages a little sharper.


Kind regards, Rogério Brito.

-- 
Rogério Brito : rbrito@{mackenzie,ime.usp}.br : GPG key 1024D/7C2CAEB8
http://www.ime.usp.br/~rbrito : http://meusite.mackenzie.com.br/rbrito
Projects: algorithms.berlios.de : lame.sf.net : vrms.alioth.debian.org



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