Hi, > On Jan 4, 2025, at 6:02 PM, Eric Auer via Freedos-devel > <freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net> wrote: > > > Hi Jim, > [..] >>> - move BOOTFIX to BOOT >> The package description is "Bootfix is a boot sector repair tool" so >> I'm okay moving this to "BOOT" > > Good. It also makes SYSLINUX less lonely :-) > >>> - add METAKERN to BOOT > > Just an idea. No need to add if too much hassle. > >>> - rename SYSLNX to SYSLINUX >> This is the Syslinux bootloader collection... > > As far as I remember, FreeDOS itself used it > and the bootable RAMDISK of it to boot CD.
It is used by the LiveCD. Alternatively, it could be considered a development tool and moved to DEVEL thus eliminating the BOOT group. But, probably better to leave it in BOOT. Something to worry about post-1.4. :-) > [..] > Useful in DISK: Alternatives for FDISK, the small > FINDDISK and WHICHFAT tools, DOSFSCK which can > "chkdsk" FAT32 drives but needs plenty of RAM and > TESTDISK which helps recover lost/formatted data. I think these would be more useful on the LiveCD than installed. However, their presence on the LiveCD would mean that they would be installed. Probably something else to revisit later. :-) > [..] >>> Move the following to TOOLS, or all of UTIL to Install: >> [..] >> We discussed these months ago, I don't know why we would move them >> around now when we are about to go forward with RC2 and then FreeDOS >> 1.4. > > I already thought that it is a bit late to suggest > too many TOOLS-UTIL migrations at this moment. We > could re-open the topic at a later time. However, > UTIL is not that big, so we could just keep the > whole category on Install instead of Bonus :-) Based on the discussion a while back, it was decided that most of the stuff in the Utilities group did not need always installed for general users and the group should be moved to the BonusCD. However, there are several packages classified as Utilities that are absolutely critical to providing specific functionality users have come to expect from FreeDOS. So, those required packages were moved into a new group called Tools. The addition of a pair of other packages were added to the group because of their overall usefulness. Nothing else was moved to that group. Those packages are: 1) V8Power Tools. While it was created primarily to power the installer, it provides some needed functionality used by other parts of the OS post installation. It provides the NLS support in many FDHELPER[*] batch files. Plus there are some things needed by a few batch files (like the CDROM.BAT and FDNET.BAT) which would not be possible (or at least practical) without the functionality provided by V8Power Tools. 2) CWSDMPI. Needed for unzip and a couple other programs. 3) AMBREAD. Needed to display the AMB HELP based FreeDOS Help. However if we only install HTMLHELP, this package can be moved back to Utilities. 4) PKGTOOLS. Provides PKGINFO which can be used directly. However, it is needed by a couple FDHELPER batch files to display installed package related information. 5) SLOWDOWN. Not required. But very useful for running very old programs that cannot run on fast computers. 6) CALLVER. Not Required. But, can be helpful to run programs expecting a specific DOS version. ( * FDHELPER is a small package that provides a few batch files. Things like "Welcome to FreeDOS”, CD Initialization, HELP.BAT live in this package. ) All that being said. After 1.4 is released we will want to revisit this and probably add some more of the extremely useful packages (like Slowdown and CallVer) from Utilities to the Tools group. :-) Jerome
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