FullFAT development is well underway now, and moving ahead at full-speed. So far FAT16 support is the most comprehensive, with some small bug-fixes required to finish the full FAT32 support.

Long FileName (LFN) support is also working extremely well, and FullFAT can already quickly traverse its way through directory trees, and quickly provide the contents of the folder to a simple LS program.

Further testing is required for BIG ENDIAN architectures, to ensure maximum portability. As I only have a LITTLE ENDIAN pc, and access to little endian BlackFIN development hardware, its difficult for me to test and debug my BIG ENDIAN routines.

Full read file capabilities should be finished by the end of this week, for fat16 and 32 formats. FAT12 support will be implemented later, although its possible I might not include this in the final product for code density reasons. (If you’re using FAT12 let me know, and I’ll make sure it gets included).

After the FAT16/32 file read support I’ll be doing a full code-review, to minimise memory footprints, increase performance and efficiency. I’ll also be implementing a full-featured I/O manager, that will handle caching by sectors (for memory constrained devices) or by clusters (for those with a bit more freedom!).

I’m still thinking exactly what to do with the code,shall I release under GPL for the greater good of Free Software, or maybe I’ll provide it free for non-commercial use only. Charging embedded designers only a reasonable one-off fee for use in their end products.

I expect an initial release of FullFAT around January 2009.