Re: stage 1

[Jeroen Dekkers]

On Mon, Feb 16, 2004 at 08:38:18PM +0100, address@hidden wrote:
> "Wolf Lammen" <address@hidden> wrote:
> <snip>
> > D. Software Design
> > Some of the complexity of stage 1 could be put down to the fact that it is
> > designed as an allrounder. Whether you use it on a hard disk or on a floppy
> > disk does not matter at all. This was convenient at times when there were 
> > only
> > two media types bootable. You simply copy the boot track from a floppy
> > disk to a hard disk, and all works fine.
> > But this concept is broken for quite some time already. First, you see
> > plenty of other bootable media such as a CD-ROM. Second, because of BIOS 
> > bugs,
> > GRUB already patches stage 1 when it loads it onto a hard drive, so simple
> > copying won't work any more already.
> 
> If it counts for anything , I'd say it seems like a sensible way
> forward. Anything which makes things cleaner is a Good Thing, imo.
> Given the relatively small number of active hackers I've seen on this
> list I'd be inclined to say that a cleaner architecture from a SW
> Design point of view is desirable and might lead to more people being
> able to successfully contribute, fix bugs etc.
<SNIP>

I suggest you take a look at PUPA (http://www.nongnu.org/pupa/). It's
a nice redesign of GRUB, but it doesn't yet have all the features GRUB
currently has.

-- 
Jeroen Dekkers