[bug-fdisk] GNU Fdisk rewritten from scratch!

[Christian]

We are happy to announce the release of GNU fdisk 2.0.0 alpha.

NEWS:
====

In this new release we have made many improvements to fdisk.
The source code was rewritten from scratch with a new modular
design that allows you to easily write new user interfaces
and device backends.

The most important feature of this new implementation
is that user interfaces are implemented using Guile.
GNU fdisk includes a Scheme interpreter (using libguile),
and exports a set of symbols to manage devices, disklabels
and partitions. 

We can implement a new interface and use gnufdisk's
functionality with it. With the help of FFI we can also
implement interfaces in GTK, DirectFB, ncurses etc.
And the most important point is that we must only
communicate with the user, everything else is
handled in the core.

The core is written in C and is composed of 5 libraries
and one executable:

  * libgnufdisk-common 
      A generic library;
        
  * libgnufdisk-debug 
      A library for managing information/warning messages;

  * libgnufdisk-exception
      A library to raise and handle exceptions;

  * libgnufdisk-device 
      A library that provides a common
      interface to devices, and manages
      the loading of modules.

  * libgnufdisk-devicemanager
      A library that manages devices and errors,
      communicating through the user interface.

  * libgnufdisk-userinterface
      A library that includes a scheme interpreter
      and forward requests to `gnufdisk-devicemanager'.

  * gnufdisk 
      Executable that invokes the selected user interface.

The management operations are in separate modules. Modules are loaded
dynamically when a device is created in software.

Each user interface can handle more than one device (using Guile
variables),
each one associated with a different module. The core is completely
reentrant
and there are no conflicts between devices (even in multi-threaded
mode).

Unfortunately we do not have a module that manages the operations. 
We will start working on it now and will release it as soon as
possible. 
We do not have a user interface, but you can start gnufdisk in shell
mode
using command:

        gnufdisk shell ARGUMENT...

This is the most powerful way to use gnufdisk.


DOWNLOAD:
========

Gzipped tarballs are available from:

  ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/fdisk/

and its mirror sites. SHA1 sums may be found there as well.

The web site of GNU fdisk is at:

  http://www.gnu.org/software/fdisk/


CONTRIBUTING:
============

With this new release we need much help. We want to complete the package
providing basic user interfaces (fdisk, cfdisk) and a module for
managing operations. 

We need help for documentation. We started a draft, but there is much
to be done.

We need people who try to install the package and notify us of any
problems.


----

Leslie P. Polzer <address@hidden>
Christian Brunello <address@hidden>


GNU fdisk Maintainer's