Hello,
I didn't like very much the code I had to check for an overflow of the binary table used in the Extents and Catalog B-trees for the node allocation.
Therefore, I had the idea to build this list when formatting. I followed the specs and built a simply linked list from the tree header. All nodes are empty, with only the downward pointer, the 2 as node kind, a 1 since there is a single entry and the two offsets at the end, 00 0E for the binary table and 01 FC (in the case of a HFS node) pointing to itself.
But Mac OS X doesn't seem to like my idea, refuses to mount even an empty volume, as soon as there is a map node linked list.
Who should build this list? Is it against the rule to build an empty node list?