Want advises

[Serge Lussier]

HI,
Sorry if this message is long. I want to have your advice before I release a
QT/KDE program I made. Then I have to explain.
And of course I used Kdevelop  (kdk1.1) to do it! And this mailing list is
the only way I know to get the advices  I want.

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I'm writting an application which make images of partitions. It could be
seen as a kind of backup/restore application.
Right now it is working very find. I feel I could release it, but I am not
sure.
My program is not a normal backup utility and it is limited to making image
and restore it.
And it could be dangerous to scrap a disk partition accidently. ( I don't
think so but...)

I'm making this program because I have both MS-Windows98 and Linux installed
on my Computer. I have about 20 GB
of storage capacity on two hard disks spreaded in several partitions.
I was used to make an image of my Win98 primary partition to a compressed
file (of course into an other partition) by using
"dd if=/dev/hda1 | gzip --best > win98.gz" ( and the reverse to restore it )
when I freshly installed and tuned Win98.
For unknown reason, Win98 start to f$#@k after a certain time. Then this
image is very usefull when the time comes to re-install
Win98 in that I don't have to fight several hours to re-tune win98 and the
hardware drivers to work together in peace and etc...

But this program is useful only in certain conditions:
1 - Having reasonale amount of (free) storage capacity is required (...)
2 - Before installing the minimal set of Win98 and the extra stuff, clear
the partition by filling it with zero bytes values to reduce
  the size of the compressed file. ( send zeros to "dd of=/dev/hda1")
  ex. : my win98 partition is 3.44 GB big. the working stuff takes 700 MB
out of that space.
  The resulting compressed file is almost 300 MB only, after compression of
this 3.44 GB,
  thanks to having zero-filled the partition previously.

3 - Have to re-format the partition after "cleared" it ( obviously the
partition is unusable after the clear ).

4 - Install the stuff ( minimum confortable and well tuned, and whatever
else...)

5 - Then make an image.

6 - Restore the image to a "compatible" partition.

The program I made is then a GUI front-end to "dd" and it uses the zlib for
the compression.
The Win98 topic was only to explain the reason why I made this program. Of
course it can be used
for making an image of any partition...

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As you could guess, I never released any thing...
Thus my questions are:
 - Is it worth to send that program to the WWW public?
 - Is that program could be really usefull ?
 - What are my obligations after releasing it ?
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I'm waiting your impressions / and / advices...

Thanks a lot.
Serge Lussier
ICQ#53409121