Re: [PATCH] Enable pager by default

[Daniel Kiper]

On Tue, Oct 22, 2019 at 09:50:10PM -0400, Nicholas Vinson wrote:
> On 10/22/19 10:04, Daniel Kiper wrote:
> > On Tue, Oct 22, 2019 at 10:30:20AM +0200, Javier Martinez Canillas wrote:
> > > Hello Daniel,
> > >
> > > On 10/21/19 4:56 PM, Daniel Kiper wrote:
> > > > On Fri, Oct 18, 2019 at 02:43:18PM +0200, Javier Martinez Canillas 
> > > > wrote:
> > > > > From: Peter Jones <address@hidden>
> > > > >
> > > > > When user enters into the GRUB shell and tries to use help command, 
> > > > > lot of
> > > > > information is scrolled out of screen and the user doesn't have 
> > > > > chance to
> > > > > read it. Also, there isn't any information about 'set pager=1' at the 
> > > > > end
> > > > > of the help output, to tell the user how scrolling could be enabled.
> > > > >
> > > > > So just enable pager by default which leads to a much better 
> > > > > experience.
> > > >
> > > > Hmmm... What will happen if a command produce tons of output during boot
> > > > process? I am afraid that it will hang indefinitely waiting for an user
> > > > input. This should not happen. So, I tend to agree that current help
> > > > command behavior is annoying but I do not like the solution.
> > >
> > > Ok. I'll then explore having a paginated output only for the help command
> > > instead of globally enabling it by default.
> >
> > Great! Though I would think about something which can be used also in
> > other commands producing a lot of output. Maybe we should introduce "-p"
> > (pause) command line option for such commands. And I am not against
> > using existing code to do a pause. We just have to do it carefully.
>
> I think default paging behavior could be handled by an environment variable
> with paging disabled by default. GRUB's console could then print a very

Well, it is handled in that way. So?

> short message instructing people to set the variable to enable command
> paging.  I believe this would handle both concerns.

This is an option too. Though I am not convinced to change the global
variable to change the behavior of one command.

Daniel