Comment 8 for bug 511075

From NEWS (note that we already have the linux-swap changes):

* Noteworthy changes in release 2.1 (2009-12-20) [stable]

** New features

  new --align=<align> commandline option which can have the following values:
  none: Use the minimum alignment allowed by the disk type
  cylinder: Align partitions to cylinders (the default)
  minimal: Use minimum alignment as given by the disk topology information
  optimal: Use optimum alignment as given by the disk topology information
  The minimal and optimal values will use layout information provided by the
  disk to align the logical partition table addresses to actual physical
  blocks on the disks. The mininal value uses the minimum aligment needed to
  align the partition properly to physical blocks, which avoids performance
  degradation. Where as the optimal value uses a multiple of the physical
  block size in a way that guarantees optimal performance.
  The min and opt values will only work when compiled with
  libblkid >= 2.17 and running on a kernel >= 2.6.31, otherwise they will
  behave as the none --align value.

  libparted: new functions to set per disk (instead of per partition) flags:
  ped_disk_set_flag()
  ped_disk_get_flag()
  ped_disk_is_flag_available()
  ped_disk_flag_get_name()
  ped_disk_flag_get_by_name()
  ped_disk_flag_next()

  libparted: new per disk flag: PED_DISK_CYLINDER_ALIGNMENT. This flag
  (which defaults to true) controls if disk types for which cylinder alignment
  is optional do cylinder alignment when a new partition gets added.

  libparted: new functions to return per-partition-table-type limits:
    - ped_disk_max_partition_start_sector: Return the largest representable
    start sector number for a given "disk".
    - ped_disk_max_partition_length: Return the maximum partition length
    for a given "disk".

  new command "align-check TYPE N" to determine whether the starting sector
  of partition N is TYPE(minimal|optimal)-aligned for the disk. E.g.,
      parted -s /dev/sda align-check min 1 && echo partition 1 is min-aligned
      parted -s /dev/sda align-check opt 2 && echo partition 2 is opt-aligned
  The same libblkid and kernel version requirements apply as for --align

  Add functions to libparted to get minimal and optimal alignment
  information from devices:
  ped_device_get_minimal_aligned_constraint()
  ped_device_get_optimal_aligned_constraint()
  ped_device_get_minimum_alignment()
  ped_device_get_optimum_alignment()
  The same libblkid and kernel version requirements apply as for --align

  Add ped_disk_get_partition_alignment() function to libparted to get
  information about alignment enforced by the disk type.

** Bug fixes

  parted can once again create partition tables on loop devices.
  Before, "parted -s /dev/loop0 mklabel gpt" would fail.
  [bug introduced in parted-1.9.0]

  improved >512-byte sector support: for example, printing a table on a
  4k-sector disk would show "Sector size (logical/physical): 4096B/512B",
  when the sizes should have been "4096B/4096B".

  gpt tables are more rigorously checked; before, partition entry array CRCs
  were not checked, and we would mistakenly use the AlternateLBA member of a
  known-corrupt primary table.

  improved dasd disk support, in previous versions calling
  ped_disk_new_fresh() or ped_disk_duplicate() on a dasd type PedDisk
  would fail. This is fixed now.

  handle device nodes created by lvm build with udev synchronisation enabled
  properly.

  when printing tables, parted no longer truncates flag names

* Noteworthy changes in release 2.0 (2009-10-06) [beta]

** Improvements

  Parted now supports disks with sector size larger than 512 bytes.
  Before this release, Parted could operate only on disks with a sector
  size of 512 bytes. However, disk manufacturers are already making disks
  with an exposed hardware sector size of 4096 bytes. Prior versions of
  Parted cannot even read a partition table on such a device, not to
  mention create or manipulate existing partition tables.
  Due to internal design and time constraints, the following
  less-common partition table types are currently disabled:
    amiga, bsd, aix, pc98
  "bsd" and "amiga" are mostly done, but had a few minor problems,
  so may remain disabled until someone requests that they be revived.

** Bug fixes

  big-endian systems can once again read GPT partition tables
  [bug introduced in parted-1.9.0]

  ped_partition_is_busy no longer calls libparted's exception handler,
  since doing so caused trouble with anaconda/pyparted when operating on
  dmraid devices.

  Partitions in a GPT table are no longer assigned the "microsoft
  reserved partition" type. Before this change, each partition would
  be listed with a type of "msftres" by default.

* Noteworthy changes in release 1.9.0 (2009-07-23) [stable]

** Bug fixes

  parted now preserves the protective MBR (PMBR) in GPT type labels.
  http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/parted-devel/2008-December/\
    002473.html
  http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-parted/2008-12/msg00015.html

  gpt_read now uses SizeOfPartitionEntry instead of the size of
  GuidPartitionEntry_t. This ensures that *all* of the partition
  entries are correctly read.
  http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/parted-devel/2008-December/\
    002465.html
  http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/parted-devel/attachments/\
    20081202/b7c0528d/attachment.txt

  mklabel (interactive mode) now correctly asks for confirmation, when
  replacing an existent label, without outputting an error message.
  http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/parted-devel/2009-January/\
    002739.html

  resize now handles FAT16 file systems with a 64k cluster. This
  configuration is not common, but it is possible.
  http://parted.alioth.debian.org/cgi-bin/trac.cgi/ticket/207

  parted now ignores devices of the type /dev/md* when probing. These
  types of devices should be handled by the device-mapper capabilities
  of parted.
  http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/parted-devel/2009-April/\
    002781.html

  The parted documentation now describes the differences in the options
  passed to mkpart for the label types.
  http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/parted-devel/2009-April/\
    002782.html

** Changes in behavior

  include/parted/beos.h, include/parted/gnu.h and include/parted/linux.h
  have been removed. The symbols contained in these files (GNUSpecific,
  ped_device_new_from_store, BEOSSpecific, LinuxSpecific, LINUX_SPECIFIC)
  were moved to the individual files that need them.

  In libparted, the linux-swap "filesystem" types are now called
  "linux-swap(v0)" and "linux-swap(v1)" rather than "linux-swap(old)"
  and "linux-swap(new)" as in parted 1.8, or "linux-swap" as in older
  versions; "old" and "new" generally make poor names, and v1 is the
  only format supported by current Linux kernels. Aliases for all
  previous names are available.