automount ntfs volumes (was ntfs volume and locale= option)

[Szabolcs Szakacsits]

On Sat, 11 Oct 2008, Danny Kukawka wrote:
> On Freitag, 10. Oktober 2008, Robby Workman wrote:
> > On Fri, 10 Oct 2008 22:13:53 +0300 (EEST)
> > Szabolcs Szakacsits <szaka at ntfs-3g.org> wrote:
> [...]
> > > If we shipped several config files for the different HAL versions
> > > then we wouldn't be able to on-the-fly replace them when HAL changes.
> >
> > Why not ship an fdi file that works with currently released hal source?

Unfortunately we have a very rigid quality assurance and warranty. 
Something either works stable everywhere and we fully support it, 
or we don't support it at all.

This way users know what they can expect from us. People tend to be highly 
careful and paranoid with file systems and they typically dislike any kind 
of uncertainty. 

Compatibility with the latest released HAL source would cover less than 5% 
of the users. It's not worth to create an even bigger confusion and trying 
to support different HAL official and patched releases which fundamentally 
has nothing to do with file system development.

I see three potential solutions:

 1. Ntfs-3g includes something which works everywhere and we will fully 
    support it in the future.

 2. Distribution maintainers include the proper HAL config which works 
    with their shipped HAL version. This is how it is done now.

 3. HAL follows its own convention for core file systems.

> That is also what other packages do.

There isn't any block device based, widely used, core file system utilised 
on any distributions from 2.4 to the latest 2.6 Linux kernel which would 
have its own fdi file. 

If there were then please let us know and I would very happily study how 
they can support 20 million users in vastly different environments. Thanks.

Regards,
	   Szaka

--
NTFS-3G:  http://ntfs-3g.org