On Fri, 18 Feb 2000, Todd Whitesel wrote:

> > Also, the drive above for this lib is different than what I think you had.
> > I think we really need something to let all ports READ other disk layouts.
> > I don't think we really need a library for WRITING other diks layouts.
> 
> Cross-build tools (specifically install media) and cross-installation (which
> I continue to believe would be really cool) both depend on the ability to
> write other disk layouts.
> 
> Certainly it shouldn't be your top priority, but please don't ignore it
> either.

Right. But I don't think we should use a library for this. We just need
things like fdisk, pdisk, or whatever we use, to compile on other
platforms. And maybe to make the programs which have MACHINE dependent
parts to compile all the bits(*), and just conditionally execute them.
Like you'd add an -M machine option to disklabel, etc.

(*) install tools would be slimmed down, just like we have smaller
versions of init, etc.

The bit about the library is that nothing other than the one tool which
mucks with say atari disklabels will need to be able to write them. Well
maybe the curses and the X programs which do it will, but no others will.
:-)

Take care,

Bill