FYI, I've just pushed this:
>From aa4f43e7c9750a57e15002db2bda3517d8dee682 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: Jim Meyering <[email protected]>
Date: Tue, 6 Oct 2009 16:23:19 +0200
Subject: [PATCH] doc: update README
* README (WARNING): Mention upcoming removal of FS-manipulation
capabilities and that we'll retain FAT/HFS resize capabilities.
Remove an obsolete URL. Do not encourage email to individuals.
Update info-viewing instructions, provide the on-line doc URL.
---
README | 43 +++++++++++++++++++++++++------------------
1 files changed, 25 insertions(+), 18 deletions(-)
diff --git a/README b/README
index 1edacd5..af9d896 100644
--- a/README
+++ b/README
@@ -1,35 +1,43 @@
GNU Parted
----------
-GNU Parted is a program for creating, destroying, resizing, checking and
-copying partitions, and the filesystems on them. This is useful for creating
-space for new operating systems, reorganising disk usage, copying data between
-hard disks, and disk imaging.
+GNU Parted is a program for manipulating partition tables.
+
+WARNING: USING PARTED TO PERFORM FILE SYSTEM OPERATIONS IS DEPRECATED
+---------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+Parted retains (for now) the ability to create and modify a few types of
+file systems, but that functionality is deprecated. Whenever possible,
+we recommend that you use file-system-specific tools to create and
+operate on file systems. For example, use the e2fsprogs programs
+to operate on ext2, ext3 and ext4 file systems. Use programs from
+the reiserfsprogs package if you want to manipulate reiserfs file
+systems. Although Parted lets you do some of the same things, the
+file-system-related code in parted is not as robust as the code in
+more specialized, FS-specific packages.
+
+So far, we have good arguments for retaining the capability to resize
+FAT and HFS file systems: as far as we know, no other free software
+provides that functionality. However, all other FS-related functionality
+will be removed from an upcoming release of Parted. Thus, you should
+now avoid using the following commands: mkpartfs, mkfs, cp, move, check
+since support for them will be removed.
* documentation is in the doc/ directory. The User's documentation is in
texinfo format, and is built into a format viewable by info/pinfo when
-you run make. i.e.
+you run make. To view the distributed texinfo documentation, run this:
- $ ./configure
- $ cd doc
- $ make
$ info -f parted.info
-Yes, it sucks that you need to run ./configure before you can read the manual.
-If you have problems with it, doc/parted.texi should be fairly easy to read,
-just a bit less userfriendly.
- If you prefer html format, you can run:
+Or view it on-line at:
- $ cd doc
- $ makeinfo --html parted.texi
+ http://www.gnu.org/software/parted/manual/parted.html
- * an online tutorial is available at http://www.luv.asn.au/overheads/parted
* the GNU Parted home page is http://www.gnu.org/software/parted
* the GNU Parted FAQ can be found at
http://www.gnu.org/software/parted/faq.html
* send bug reports, requests for help, feature requests, comments, etc. to
[email protected]. The authors can be contacted directly (see the AUTHORS
-file).
+ [email protected].
NOTE TO DISTRIBUTIONS
@@ -60,4 +68,3 @@ only interested in partition tables). Since it's readonly,
--enable-debug
gains you nothing wrt safety, so use --disable-debug ;) The "discover"
program is about 35k (gzipped) when compiled this way (not counting libc
and libuuid).
-
--
1.6.5.rc2.204.g8ea19
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