[openbeos] Re: The FAT file system

"Imre Leber" <imre.leber@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> I was just wondering should OpenBeOS have full support of the FAT
> filesystems, I know there is some support planned for FAT32. But what 
> about
> FAT12, FAT16? I know BeOS supports FAT.

BeOS supports this file system in all flavours, and fortunately, the 
source of the file system was released as part of the sample-code 
program.
We already have an updated driver of it in our repository, you can find 
it under: develop/src/add-ons/kernel/file_systems/dos
On the other hand, it has some issues and is notably slower than other 
implementations of that file system. So if you would like to have a 
look on how to improve it, you're welcome.
But our file system API is not yet completed, it will have to be ported 
to it once it is ready. Although the FS-API itself will be very similar 
(just removes some design inherent limitations with attributes and 
queries), we will have a completely new cache design which will most 
probably have a completely different API.
So right now, it would probably make sense to identify the problems of 
that add-on, and write them down (maybe in a newsletter article? :-)) 
and solve them when we have completed that API.

> Since i am very familiar with the filesystems i would be able to a 
> FAT
> driver for OpenBeOS. Moreover i could port my defrag and scandisk 
> projects
> to BeOS, of course with a nice interface. There is probably already a
> version of DOSFSCK ready for OpenBeOS, but that is only a command 
> line
> utility and doesn't give very nice output.

That would be very nice, too. Right now, there isn't even a port of 
that tool, but I guess it would be easy to do that.
But even there, we are in the progress of developing a standard API to 
make that functionality available to the end user - we just don't plan 
to provide any implementation for any file system for R1; if you want 
to change that, we wouldn't stop you, though.

Adios...
   Axel.

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