GNU fdisk

GNU fdisk aims to provide alternate command-line interfaces to libparted, the GNU project's partitioning library.

It aims to provide several programs (this list may be expanded to include other fdisk versions; for example, FreeBSD fdisk):

The standard interface offered via the 'fdisk' link is 'gfdisk'.

For a list of supported file systems and partition tables, please see the GNU Parted web site.


Students may begin submitting their proposals beginning May 1st at the Google SoC website. If none of the following ideas do not interest you, feel free to propose any other ideas that you think will add some value to GNU fdisk. Please direct proposals and questions to Leslie P. Polzer.

Important notice: you do NOT need to be an expert in partitioning and file systems. You will get a mentor that is proficient with libparted and those topics.

Please see the following interesting texts from the Drupal project for helpful general advice on the Summer of Code:


Finish lfdisk

This task consists of two subtasks:

  1. Make the 'lfdisk' interface as similar as possible to Linux fdisk version 2.12 (from the util-linux package).
  2. Fix libparted's BSD disk label support.

Create gfdisk

Create a full-featured Linux fdisk style interface to libparted. It should support all things 'parted' does.

You may use the source of 'lfdisk' and 'parted' for this.

Create cfdisk

Create a Linux cfdisk (Curses) style interface to libparted. It should support all things Linux cfdisk (from the util-linux packages) does.

You may use the source of 'cfdisk' and 'parted' for this.