e2fsprogs in busybox-1.5.0

[Denis Vlasenko]

On Thursday 17 May 2007 01:23, Nagendra Tomar wrote:
> Hi,
>     I downloaded the busybox-1.5.0 build and noticed that
>     some of the e2fsprogs, most importantly mke2fs, have
>     been moved to the old_e2fsprogs directory. I would
>     like to know the reason behind this.    

e2fsprogs were added to busybox without sufficient de-bloating,
and were staying that way for many months.

>     Is there a plan to support mke2fs ?
>     If yes why has it been moved to 
> old_e2fsprogs, and not being built in the standard build ?
> If not why is it not being supported ? 

Anyone is free to volunteer to do that. So far nobody wanted
to do it.

What needs to be done:

1) debloat e2fsprogs: use libbb more, remove silly code
like uuid generation by reading MAC addresses from all
network interfaces.

2) make sure that it is compatible with mainline e2fsprogs,
so that our e2fsck do not "repair" (== destroy) ext2/3 filesystems
with newer features it doesn't know about.

The last thing we want is bug reports "Aieee busybox'e
e2fsck ate my disk!!!"

If you want to do it but cannot surmount all of e2fsprogs,
work in smaller steps - like, resurrect mke2fs only...
--
vda