[Gta04-owner] Upstream Replicant 4.2 support for GTA04

[Dr. H. Nikolaus Schaller]

Am 02.03.2014 um 12:36 schrieb mx4812 at arcor.de:

> 
> 
>>> The recovery binary expects to have /system, /data and /cache as
>>> separate partitions as well. It will *format* the partitions from their
>>> mount points when asked to wipe data.
>> 
>> Ah, ok. I understand.
>> 
>> But why doe we need to reformat the card at all? We can provide a GTA04
>> recovery mechanism that does not wipe it out.
> 
> 
> For what it's worth, as a user I would appreciate both, a simple one
> partition image to install, switch, recover, ...
> And a standard way to keep data and apps on a separate partition.
> 
> If maybe we could have a gta convention for a data partition, distros
> could symlink to them. For example, replicant's /data could be symlinked
> to the /replicant/data on the shared data partition.

Well, I think you don't even need any standard scheme (at least on the single-
partition Replicant).

It can work as follows (but you are completely free to rearrange):

Partition1:	Replicant
Partition2:	Debian
Partition3:	Data

Now if you insert such a card it will automount to

/media/Replicant
/media/Debian
/media/Data

Simply access your data through these paths.

And, you can add some symlinks for convenience,
e.g.

ln -s /media/Replicant/data /media/Debian/home/replicant
ln -s /media/Data /media/Replicant/data/shared

or as you proposed

ln -s /media/Data/replicant /media/Replicant/data

With the single-partition Replicant It is up to you to do that (or not do it) when
formatting your SD card.

I generally find it better if a distro provides a simple and working standard setup
but does not impose some specific structure or makes it difficult to change.

> The replicant recovery tool could just rm -rf /data/* if it is not a mountpoint.

I still wonder what this function should be good for. No desktop OS has or
needs a "delete all data" function and issues 3 warnings if you want to reformat
a disk.

BR,
Nikolaus