Re: Grub 2 Grub Super Disk WishList

[Marco Gerards]

"adrian15" <address@hidden> writes:

Hi adrian15,

(posting on grub-devel instead of bug-grub.  You can post on
grub-devel as well if you subscribe to that list)

This is what I think of your proposals.  I hope the other GRUB2
developers would give their opinions as well.

> PROPOSAL 1) - Device autodetection
> ============
> Grub 2 should be able to autodetect where the
> main/first menu.lst is. 
> Grub 2 should be able to store automagically this device
> into a constant called
> GRUB_DEVICE

Is this the same as the prefix variable GRUB 2 uses?

> Grub Menu Advantadge
> ====================
> This option is useful for not having to rewrite menu.lst files
> that invoke another config files with the configfile command.
>
> If you develop a floppy disk with menus that invoke other menus
> like Grub Super Disk you will use commands like this:
>
>
> title spanish
> configfile (fd0)/grub/es/menu.lst
>
> If you want to make the same thing into a cdrom or into a network device
> you should replace (fd0) and put (cd) or (nd) respectively.
>
> Why can't we have something like:
>
>
> title spanish
> configfile GRUB_DEVICE/grub/es/menu.lst

You could use:

configfile ${prefix}/grub/es/menu.lst


> the following command:
>
> title Back to main menu
> configfile ../menu.lst
>
> should load: GRUB_DEVICE/grub/es/menu.lst
>
> This should help making complex menus with Grub.

Isn't this possible already?  I think something like this is possible
already:

configfile ${prefix}/..

>
> PROPOSAL 3) GRUB_TITLE
> ========================
> There is a variable which stores a main title which is displayed
> in the place where in GRUB 1.X is shown the grub version and the
> free mem.
>
> Every menu in Grub 1.x is the Grub menu. This way each menu can
> have a name of its own.

That would be possible, I wonder what the other developers think of
that.

>
> PROPOSAL 4) OLD MENU.LST VARIABLE
> =================================
> Once we load a configfile if we had already loaded another configfile
> the path/filename of this configfile into a variable called:
> OLD_CONFIGFILE.
>
> This will help to make Previous Menu option easier. Although I think
> that some sort of global variables among the different configfiles
> should be used.
>
> If one menu calls a second one and this second one calls a third one then
> OLD_CONFIGFILE of the first one and of the second one are lost.
>
> Having each previously loaded configfile each own OLD_CONFIGFILE should
> eat resources and maybe Grub developers don't want this.
>
> Any other similar idea?

I think you can implement this yourself like this:

THISFILE=/grub/es/menu.lst

title foo
set LAST=$THISFILE
configfile blah

title bar
set LAST=$THISFILE
configfile blah

Right?


> PROPOSAL 5) 2-line menu options
> ================================
> Grub should be ready to show title string that exceed screen width in 
> characters if we set it to this behaviour.
>
> This behaviour should be set with a variable like LINE2YES.

Why would this be useful?  It might be hard to implement and make the
code obscure.

> PROPOSAL 6) echo command
> ============================
> The cat command is very useful to show files but sometimes we need to show
> text and it doesn't need to be asociated to an option.
>
> So an echo command is needed (the same basic behaviour as linux one)

I agree that an echo command might be usable, especially when
scripting is implemented.

> PROPOSAL 7) cat more
> ==========================
> The cat command shows files. But with Grub 1.x if you run it within a menu 
> it doesn't stop at a full screen, even if the PAGER is ON.
> I think cat should be stoppeable.

set pager=1

Doesn't that work?

Please tell me if I misunderstood one of your proposals.

--
Marco