On Apr 20, 2007, at 8:27 AM, Ivan Voras wrote: > My accepted GSoC project this year is making a graphical FreeBSD > installer (see http://wiki.freebsd.org/finstall). One of the first > functional (not related to UI) things the installer does is disk > partitioning, and I'm trying to simplify this step. *snip* > The FreeBSD kernel supports GPT, and AFAIK the ability to modify > them in-place was recently added with the "unified" GPT slicer. > There are two things that are stopping total use of GPT right now: *snip* You can achieve the same (i.e. simplify partitioning), but without going off into the woods (i.e. try to boot from GPT). The new GEOM partitioning class currently only understands GPT and APM, but can be easily extended to support MBR and BSD schemes as well as the SUN scheme. Extending the GEOM partitioning class that way allows you to work the problem based on a single unified API, which mostly abstracts the gory details and should allow you to simplify things. This probably is more fruitful that trying to change how disks are being partitioned. The whole idea behind the GPART GEOM class is that it's to be extended in the way I described. I'm working on a userland tool for it and we could greatly benefit from each other's work. Which for you means that you may actually have time to work on the installer, rather than see you time spent on disk partitioning alone. For me it means that I have feedback about missing functionality before I finish the tool, which should help write the tool in such a way that the missing functionality can be added easily later, if not right away. For FreeBSD the advantage is that things will start to come together in a logical design and hopefully end up being implemented completely. Just a thought, -- Marcel Moolenaar xcllnt_at_mac.comReceived on Fri Apr 20 2007 - 15:23:52 UTC
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