Re: address@hidden: Bug#172662: libparted1.6-0: please don't call sgi disklabels mips disklabels]

[Andrew Clausen]

On Sat, Dec 14, 2002 at 10:28:55PM +0100, Guido Guenther wrote:
> On Sat, Dec 14, 2002 at 01:22:58AM +0100, Ralf Baechle wrote:
> > Definately not.  The operating systems I know of using DVH are IRIX, 
> > Risc/OS,
> > Tandem's UNIX, whatev it's name was again, Sinix, DEC Ultrix (They seem to
> > support to styles of partition, DVH and the actual BSD 4.2 label.  No idea
> > why the DVH stuff is there, some modern BSD flavours, including the current
> > ones.  Oh yes, the Linux XFS tools know about the dvh also.
> IMHO the question here is not which operating systems/tools support it
> but which of them uses it natively and as default (I doubt the 'modern
> BSD's do it nor does Ultrix). 

I think it comes down to users:
 * what is best for MOST users?
 * are there any cases where some (possibly small number) of users won't
be able to figure out what to do, with a bit of effort?

> > > Basically, I think a name that seems "obvious" to users (as opposed to
> > > "correct") is more user-friendly.  Would "sgi" create any confusion?
> > 
> > For anybody not using an SGI system I bet.
> Linux fdisk calls it SGI/Irix partition layout - it didn't seem to
> confuse anyone (at least I didn't see anything on the linux-mips lists).

The people who would get confused probably wouldn't figure out that
they should post to linux-mips lists.

> > Frankly, the whole discussion looks to me like the attempt to declare a
> > mistake the real thing.  Somebody named the thing more than a decade ago,
> > somebody clueless else missnamed it and now your try to declare the mess
> > the real thing.
> Actually parted currently calls it 'mips' which is definitely wrong. So
> would a better name be 'dvh'? The number of OSes that use this kind of
> dvh could be listed in the documentation then(in case the all use
> exactly the same dvh). I'd still prefer something that releates somehow
> to sgi/irix though.

Yeah, I agree.  I don't care much about "the real thing"... just about
users.  (It's not like the creators of the dvh layout are / should be
proud of their work!)

Perhaps 'sgi-dvh' is the best option?  It might be confusing, in that
it might look like sgi has a special variant of dvh, and that other
variants aren't supported by Parted.  That would be bad.

Cheers,
Andrew