[opensource] gnome-format 0.2

[opensource at cse.ohio-state.edu]

Silas Baronda wrote:
  > In your blog post about the gformat I saw you were asking for someone
> handy in python to improve the mkfs script.  When I looked at the script 
> it was a shell script.  Did you mean want it converted over to python or 
> is there another script that I'm missing?

Yeah - the one that is there is the most basic functionality, but I want 
to make it a bit more powerful, like a hashtable of default flags that 
should be passed to the actual mkfs.somefs call. This stuff is absurdly 
easy for someone who knows Python but I'd have to look everything up and 
it'd be a pain.

Also, there will probably be some specific shims for handling special 
cases; for example, deciding whether to use ext2 or ext3, etc. I don't 
want to put these shims in the main executable because it makes it much 
easier for distros to tweak what they want.

The idea is that every script in that directory that can create 
filesystems should respond to the '--capabilities' flag with a list of 
filesystems they can support. If that flag isn't specified, the script 
should act like the 'mkfs' program ("-t filesystem", etc). However, what 
it actually ends up calling doesn't matter.

The other thing I might need help with is the encrypt script. The 
problem is, cryptsetup can't take all of its parameters from the flags, 
it will always run in interactive mode (i.e. prompting the user for 
stuff), so I need to hack together a way for Python to send some stuff 
over pipes and what.

-- 
Paul Betts <bettsp at cse.ohio-state.edu>