simpler, less lifetime-y, solution

src/lib.rs

@@ -3,11 +3,14 @@
 extern crate alloc;
 
 use alloc::boxed::Box;
+use alloc::string::String;
 use alloc::vec::Vec;
 
 // i chose this arbitrarily, but i don't think that many people will need to access over 67 million terabytes of data from a disk
 pub type Index = u64;
 
+pub type Timestamp = u64;
+
 /// # BlockDevice
 /// interface for accessing a block device, i.e. a device that can be randomly accessed in fixed-size blocks
 /// will be implemented in vapblock_* libraries
@@ -28,24 +31,26 @@ pub trait BlockDevice {
 
 /// # BasicROPartition
 /// interface for a partition from a `BasicROPartitionTable`
-/// must implement `BlockDevice`
-pub trait BasicROPartition: BlockDevice {
+pub trait BasicROPartition {
     /// returns a `&str` of this partition's type
     /// implementation-specific
-    fn partition_type<'a>(&self) -> &'a str;
+    fn partition_type(&self) -> String;
     /// returns this partition's size in bytes
     fn size(&self) -> Index;
+    /// returns offset in bytes for accessing this partition from the beginning of the block device
+    fn offset(&self) -> Index;
 }
 
 /// # BasicROPartitionTable
 /// interface for basic interactions with a partition table over a block device
-pub trait BasicROPartitionTable<T: BasicROPartition, Sized> {
+pub trait BasicROPartitionTable<T: BasicROPartition, D: BlockDevice> {
     /// must be called before any other methods
-    fn init(&mut self, block_device: &mut dyn BlockDevice);
+    /// returns false if no valid partition table is found
+    fn init(&mut self, block_device: &mut D) -> bool;
     /// returns number of partitions
     fn partition_count(&self) -> usize;
-    /// returns Vec of (partiton_name: &str, partition: BasicROPartition)
-    fn partitions<'a>(&self) -> Vec<(&'a str, &'a mut T)>;
+    /// returns Vec of (partiton_name: String, partition: T)
+    fn partitions(&mut self) -> Vec<(String, T)>;
 }
 
 /// # BasicROFile