doc: add NEWS entry for "Add partition separator only when required"

[android-x86/external-parted.git] / README

diff --git a/README b/README
index 1edacd5..3d1fee9 100644 (file)
--- a/README
+++ b/README
@@ -1,35 +1,45 @@
 GNU Parted
 ----------
 
-GNU Parted is a program for creating, destroying, resizing, checking and
-copying partitions, and the filesystems on them.  This is useful for creating
-space for new operating systems, reorganising disk usage, copying data between
-hard disks, and disk imaging.
+GNU Parted is a program for manipulating partition tables.
+
+WARNING: USING PARTED TO PERFORM FILE SYSTEM OPERATIONS IS NO LONGER SUPPORTED
+------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+Parted (post-2.4) no longer has the ability to create and modify file systems.
+Use file-system-specific tools to create and operate on file systems.
+For example, use the e2fsprogs programs to operate on ext2, ext3 and ext4
+file systems.  Use programs from the reiserfsprogs package if you want to
+manipulate reiserfs file systems.  Although Parted lets you do some of the
+same things, the file-system-related code in parted is not as robust as the
+code in more specialized, FS-specific packages.
+
+Most FS-related functionality was removed after Parted 2.4.
+Thus, the following commands are no longer supported:
+mkpartfs, mkfs, cp, move, check, resize.
+
+
+See the file NEWS for a list of major changes in the current release.
+
 
  * documentation is in the doc/ directory.  The User's documentation is in
 texinfo format, and is built into a format viewable by info/pinfo when
-you run make.  i.e.
+you run make.  To view the distributed texinfo documentation, run this:
 
-       $ ./configure
-       $ cd doc
-       $ make
        $ info -f parted.info
 
-Yes, it sucks that you need to run ./configure before you can read the manual.
-If you have problems with it, doc/parted.texi should be fairly easy to read,
-just a bit less userfriendly.
-       If you prefer html format, you can run:
+Or view it on-line at:
 
-       $ cd doc
-       $ makeinfo --html parted.texi
+  http://www.gnu.org/software/parted/manual/parted.html
 
- * an online tutorial is available at http://www.luv.asn.au/overheads/parted
  * the GNU Parted home page is http://www.gnu.org/software/parted
  * the GNU Parted FAQ can be found at
    http://www.gnu.org/software/parted/faq.html
  * send bug reports, requests for help, feature requests, comments, etc. to
-bug-parted@gnu.org.  The authors can be contacted directly (see the AUTHORS
-file).
+   bug-parted@gnu.org.
+
+For any copyright year range specified as YYYY-ZZZZ in this package
+note that the range specifies every single year in that closed interval.
 
 
 NOTE TO DISTRIBUTIONS
@@ -53,11 +63,3 @@ not a "requires".
 
 (3) When space is important, we suggest --without-readline, --disable-shared,
 and possibly --disable-nls and --disable-dynamic-loading.
-
-If Parted is only going to be used for probing / discovery (and not
-"editing"), there is a --enable-discovery-only and --disable-fs (when you're
-only interested in partition tables).  Since it's readonly, --enable-debug
-gains you nothing wrt safety, so use --disable-debug ;)  The "discover"
-program is about 35k (gzipped) when compiled this way (not counting libc
-and libuuid).
-