Re: Full documentation for GRUB2

[Chris Murphy]

On Mar 29, 2011, at 9:19 AM, Patrick Strasser wrote:
> 
> Moreover googling is no alternative to proper documentation.
> I'd like to contribute examples that I found to the grub docs, but the
> manual gives no hint how to do so... ;-)

GRUB Legacy documentation is a severe mind bender. It is made up for by users 
posting solutions in various locations. Learning GRUB took me more effort than 
it should have given its limited scope and I attribute it entirely to 
incoherent documentation.

And GRUB2 documentation is vastly worse, made all the more problematic by 
massive architectural changes in GRUB2. Personally I find this to demonstrate a 
total lack of discipline and leadership that a hammer was not laid down by 
someone to say, effectively, "thou shalt not add in new features or change 
things, unless you are willing to document them in some coherent manner." Only 
GRUB developers understand this now. It's an insider's job. It's simply not 
possible for willing 3rd party technical writers (I am one) to come in and sort 
through the train wreck.

> It's the developers task and skill to document features.

I agree, but from this outsider's perspective, it's abundantly clear the 
developers have totally abdicated on this. And the consequences are 
unsurprising. Users are complaining, even though they should not have to really 
interact with GRUB if it is working correctly. But more importantly it has 
totally fractured support among distributions. Those developers looked at GRUB 
and found the documentation to be so hideous, and the changes so non-obvious 
and non-trivial that many (maybe most) have decided not to implement. It is not 
due to laziness that Red Hat continues to hack GRUB Legacy, even for EFI 
support.

Chris Murphy