[PATCH] doc: update README

Jim Meyering meyering at redhat.com
Tue Oct 6 14:23:19 UTC 2009


* 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
-bug-parted at gnu.org.  The authors can be contacted directly (see the AUTHORS
-file).
+   bug-parted at gnu.org.


 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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