GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 753436
Update documentation of GParted software dependencies
Last modified: 2015-10-27 17:01:25 UTC
Need to update the README documenting GParted software dependencies for the following: 1) Blkid command needs to be documented as a mandatory requirement because it is the only way in which GParted can detect a number of file system signatures. See discussion in bug 752862, comment 8 for more details. 2) User in Fedora bug report was confused because GParted calls the package btrfs-tools (that's what Debian / Ubuntu call the package) but the upstream package is called btrfs-progs and that is the name used by Fedora / CentOS / Arch / Slackware etc. (And SUSE call it btrfsprogs, no dash) https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1176108#c0 "However there is no btrfs-tools package in the standard Fedora repo. There is a btrfs-progs package, which is already installed. It's unclear whether this is a real error or simply a mismatched package name." 3) Upstream package is called reiserfsprogs. Debian / Ubuntu / Arch / Slackware use this name. But Fedora / CentOS call it reiserfs-utils and SUSE just calls it reiserfs. (http://pkgs.org/ is really useful for easily searching for packages in major distributions).
Created attachment 309008 [details] [review] Software requirements update (v1) Hi Curtis, Here's the patchset for this. My only slight question is should the file system support dialog only list the upstream package name for btrfs and distros which use the wrong names just get it listed in the README file. (I do wish the distros all used the upstream package names). Thanks, Mike
Comment on attachment 309008 [details] [review] Software requirements update (v1) Hi Mike, These changes look good to me. I saw two possible changes. a) In the comment for 3 of 3, there is a typo "resiserfsprogs". b) We might consider using "reiserfsprogs / reiserfs-utils" in the file system support dialog, and omit "reiserfs" because I think it will be more obvious to users to install a package named "reiserfs" if they are using the reiserfs file system. It would certainly be nice if all distros used the same package name, but alas, that is not to be. From a user perspective, ideally GParted would only list the packages that were missing. This; however, would require more effort and would need to account for the historical changes in package names as well. I think the effort in maintaining such code would not outweigh the benefits. If you like I could make the above two suggested changes, or else I can look at a new patch set. Thanks, Curtis
Created attachment 309022 [details] [review] Software requirements update (v2) Hi Curtis, Here's patchset v2. Updates the third patch as you suggested. Mike
Thank you Mike for the updated patch set. I hope you don't mind that I made three minor changes to comment 3 of 3. a) Replace typo "resierfsprogs" with "reiserfsprogs" b) Change "still narrower that" to "still narrower than" c) Remove extraneous blank line followed by an "s" Patch set v2 from comment #3 has been committed to the git repository for inclusion in the next release of GParted. The relevant git commits can be viewed at the following links: Document blkid command as a mandatory requirement (#753436) https://git.gnome.org/browse/gparted/commit/?id=749a2495716a82a7287fad943109b6cfb927245c Update name of the btrfs file system specific package (#753436) https://git.gnome.org/browse/gparted/commit/?id=4160ae5018192c45195dc2c023066a58f311263f Update names of the ntfs and reiserfs specific packages (#753436) https://git.gnome.org/browse/gparted/commit/?id=ff3f51ac29e270327a34a8a76dbf92a4314efb68 I will also see about updating the features page of the gparted.org web site to more closely match these dependency package names.
The features page on the GParted web site has been updated to align with the dependency documentation updates made in patch v2. http://gparted.org/features.php
Hi Curtis, We should mention this in the next set of release notes too. Something like: Dependencies (new/updated) -------------------------- * Blkid command should be considered mandatory as it is required to detect a number of file systems which libparted doesn't detect. Packagers of GParted should make either the blkid command or the util-linux package, which provides blkid, a mandatory dependency. (Not sure if the second sentence is too much). Thanks, Mike
Hi Mike, Thank you for this suggestion. I've added the first sentence regarding the blkid dependency. I tend to agree that the second sentence is a bit too much. Packagers of GParted know their job better than we do. They can look up the bug report, or look at the README which contains all the details that we suggest for packaging. Ultimately they get the final call on what they think is required or suggested for their distro. Curtis
This enhancement was included in the GParted 0.24.0 release on October 27, 2015.