Re: TODO : Add more --disable-FOO...

[Thierry Laronde]

On Wed, Feb 21, 2001 at 01:01:48PM +0900, OKUJI Yoshinori wrote:
> From: Thierry Laronde <address@hidden>
> Subject: TODO : Add more --disable-FOO...
> Date: Tue, 20 Feb 2001 16:47:58 +0100
> 
> > Using defines (with builtins functions), one can achieve some high
> > flexibility on compile time. But, for basic usages, this is unpractical. So
> > we can group via --disable-<package> several functions that belong to the
> > same group. 
> 
> I think Bash-like strategy would be better. That is, grouping options
> is performed at the configure level but not at the source
> level. Please take a look at Bash source distribution.

OK, I will give it a look.

> 
> > So, question : do you think that adding the #ifdef <NAME>_FUNC / #endif for
> > all the functions that are not core boot ones, and adding 4 or 5 "packages"
> > options in configure is the good way to go ?
> 
> I'm not sure. If you want to reduce the size significantly, you will
> have to omit many things as well as some of the builtin functions. For
> example, omitting long help messages decreases the size very much (I
> don't remember exactly). If you want to boot a single kind of
> operating system, you can disable support for other operating systems.
> 
> Because boot floppies are somewhat special, I don't see if there exists
> the best way generally. Possibly, if you want to get as small size as
> that of grub-0.5, you will have to disable fancy features that are
> difficult to be ommited just by cpp, such as file name completion.

Yes, but as the bootloader put on the floppy can, and in my mind, has to be
re-usable for the bootloader of the fresh install, the space used by GRUB is
not really "wasted" : one can reuse stage1 and stage2 for the installation
of a bootloader. I just try to define what is the best compromise between
size and features, so that GRUB is able to boot the floppy, will be able to
boot all the OS found on the disk(s) (reuse of files), and will still be a
tool for recovery (but for people accustomed to GRUB, so that perhaps help
messages can be shorten/skipped, you're right).

Regards,
-- 
Thierry LARONDE, Centre de Ressources Informatiques, Archamps - France
http://www.cri74.org
PingOO, serveur de com sur distribution GNU/Linux: http://www.pingoo.org