Re: grub

[Marco Gerards]

Roland McGrath <roland@frob.com> writes:

> Has anyone used grub2?  Is it usable yet?

It is not usable yet.

We planned scripting support for GRUB 2.  What I had in mind was just
a GRUB 2 script for the Hurd.  The script accepts the root device as
argument and loads the right kernel and modules.  For example:

loadhurd /dev/hd0s3

In GRUB 2 it will become possible to include files, write functions,
use variables (that is possible already), etc.  To me it seems that
using scripting you could easily implement what you proposed, or do
what I thought of which would be less flexible.

Personally I'd like such script to be distributed with GRUB 2 when it
has scripting capabilities and I will certainly push it.  If you have
questions about GRUB 2, please send an email to grub-devel@gnu.org.

> I ask because I sent in patches for some useful features for grub, and
> Okuji refused to put them in.  He says only grub2 will get new features.
> That seems like a bad decision to me, since everyone is using grub 0.96 and
> adding simple features there can be a real help to users.  

The decision is made to force people to contribute to GRUB 2.  And
because of this a lot of patches are made for GRUB 2 now, more than
when new features were accepted.

But another reason is that Okuji does not want to maintain GRUB Legacy
that actively.  Adding features (even proofreading patches) takes a
lot of time he could use for working on GRUB 2.

Thanks,
Marco