ntfs-3g and ntfsprogs

[Gene Czarcinski]

On Sunday 25 May 2008 23:36:49 Tom "spot" Callaway wrote:
> On Sun, 2008-05-25 at 14:56 -0400, Gene Czarcinski wrote:
> > I assume that the long term plan (goal) is to have a single package
> > which does everything "right" which is currently done by the
> > combination of ntfs-3g and ntfsprogs.
>
> ntfsprogs is not really maintained these days, but it provides utilities
> that ntfs-3g does not intend to implement in the near term.
>
> Long term, it is probable that ntfs-3g will enable the same set of
> functionality that ntfsprogs does, but until then, we'll continue to
> leverage the best of both worlds.
>
> ~spot, maintainer for both ntfs-3g and ntfsprogs

I am not trying to start any kind of "war" but just trying to provide some 
food for thought ...

1.  I grant you that 2.0.0 ntfsprogs is very "new" after about a year and a 
half of no activity so the package should be treated with care ... there is a 
very large amount of change between the 1.13.1 version in F8 and the 2.0.0 
version now in F9.  Continuing to use ntfs-3g as the default for mounting in 
F10 makes sense.

[yes, I am aware of http://forum.linux-ntfs.org/viewtopic.php?t=741 and it 
appears there is some animosity between the two developer groups ... I would 
hope that gets settled and the two projects merge at some point]

2.  With F9, anaconda includes ntfsprogs in the rescuecd and uses ntfsresize 
to support resizing of ntfs partitions during Fedora install.  Note:  I find 
it interesting that I have never seen documentation which defines just what 
packages/software anaconda sucks in for the installer/rescue bootable systems 
except in anaconda-runtime's upd-instroot shell script.

3.  I have taken a quick look at the ntfs-3g src.rpm, their website, and their 
mailing list archives.  I see nothing which implies plans to incorporate 
functionality of the utilities in ntfsprogs into ntfs-3g.  So, if you use 
ntfs-3g for mounting ntfs partitions, then, yes, you also need ntfsprogs to 
cover the functionality of its utilities.

4.  On the other hand, version 2.0.0 of ntfsprogs does now include a mount 
command for mounting ntfs partitions.  However, as packaged for Fedora, this 
mount command is not provided.  IF [and this is a big if] (a) ntfsprogs 
continues to provide active maintenance/development that it recently 
demonstrated and if (b) ntfsprogs (specifically the mount command and 
read/write I/O) demonstrates to have good reliability, then I believe that 
ntfs-3g could be removed (at some time in the future) and only ntfsprogs 
provided in Fedora.

My suggestion:  Provide an additional binary package for the ntfsprogs mount 
command (e.g., ntfsprogs-mount) which would have the mount command and 
man-page.  Installation of this "new" package should be made to conflict with 
ntfs-3g so that both could not be installed at the same time.  For F10 (an 
probably F11) continue with the current default installs ... that is, both 
ntfs-3g and ntfsprogs but not ntfsprogs-mount.

My reasoning is that unless software is readily available, nobody will test 
it.  Few, if any, individuals will go to the effort of building their own 
ntfsprogs package to include the mount command.

The risk to you (spot as the current Maintainer/stuckee and perhaps others at 
Red Hat) is that you may get additional BZ reports on problems with 
partitions mounted with ntfsprogs' mount command.  However, if there are bugs 
in ntfsprogs-2.0.0, then I claim you will get additional BZ reports from 
users using the other ntfsprogs utilities.

Anyway ... some food for thought.  Does anyone else in the developer community 
have any thoughts on this?

Gene