Hi Tom, Jeremy,

>> The main bug/feature that I plan to work on is FAT+ support,
>> the working with 4GB files goes along with this since it adds
>> support for 4+GB files.

> Please keep this out of production kernels.

I agree - modifying FAT to support files > 4 GB is asking
for trouble. Of course you can add it to the unstable
branch so people can try it there nevertheless...

Support for files between 2 and 4 GB size, on the other hand,
is very well-defined, compatible and safe to add, I already
have some notes about which knobs need fiddling for that :-).



> this involves the risk of breaking stuff inside the kernel, and is
> not (and never will be) supported of any other operating system.

If you ask me, it would be even better to have a MINIMAL (eg only
readonly, only root directory) ISO9660 / EXT2 / NTFS / whatever
driver in the kernel and load a separate full driver for that file
system later. Or, even easier, load DOS in a MEMDISK via anything
that can load Linux (grub4dos, grub, lilo, syslinux...) and put
filesystem drivers there.

The "need" for using extremely big files in DOS is minimal but
having compatibility to any other OS is extremely useful :-p.

Actually the only large file app that I can think about would
be one that juggles with DVD diskimages... That one app could
split the diskimages over 3 files, each smaller than 4 GB :-).

>> EDR already supports this.
> who cares ?

My personal opinion that some recent filesystem tweaks in EDR DOS
are a big pain for lowlevel tools... For example EDR DOS might try
to "play nice" for FAT16 apps and as a side effect lure FORMAT into
making "8 GB almost-FAT16" filesystems when it tries to hide FAT32.
Another example are EDR-specific extensions of the FAT32 BPB that
make it necessary to modify DEVLOAD to work with EDR DOS etc ;-).

Eric



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