MTD partitioning rewrite

["Jörn Engel" <joern@wohnheim.fh-wedel.de>]

Moin!

I have currently started to do a rewrite of the MTD partitioning and
the project might even grow into a complete rewrite of the central MTD
code. We will see, how much is needed...

The work will break some current code and should _not_ be included in
the cvs for a while. I will maintain my own codebase for a while and
feed the changes to David when they mature.

Here are some quick pointers at my design goals:
- An MTD device will be the equivalent of a hard drive. There will be
several, named mtda, mtdb, mtdc,...
- Each MTD device can be partitioned into mtda0 (whole device), mtda1,
mtda2,...
- The ro-devices don't seem to be necessary. If noone has strong
objections, I will just discard those.
- The partitioning should stay out of the mapping drivers as much as
possible. The mapping driver only supplies a pointer to the partition
table parser. When the device is registered, the partitioning will
automatically be read.
- The physmap driver, being the most general one, should be
copied/changed to map several devices.
- Big goal: When given a new piece of hardware, I only want to change
the kernel configuration, compile, flash and be done with it. Any
piece of hardware that needs source code tweaks is a proof that we are
not done yet.

If anyone has questions, comments, code sniplets, ideas, anything, you
can contact me privately on through the list. I will only try to do
the best, _I_ can do and hope, David approves it.

Jörn

-- 
Often, the most striking and innovative solutions come 
from realizing that your concept of the problem was wrong.