grub / grub2 conflicts

[Peter Jones]

On 09/23/2011 07:54 AM, Doug Ledford wrote:
> ----- Original Message -----
>> You're basically arguing that we should never remove any software
>> from Fedora
>> in case it's used in a virtual machine hosted on a Fedora machine.
>>
>> This is not a workable scenario.
>
> OMG Peter, can you intentionally conflate any more molehills into mountains?
> Do you even believe the stuff you are spewing? Of course it doesn't apply to
> all software, but the boot loader is an acknowledged special case of *all*
> installations, and it's something necessary to manage vm images, that does
> not conflate to all software unless you are just trying to be pissy.

I don't in any way buy that it's "necessary to manage vm images"; it's
used because of a bad design, not because it's necessary. But thanks for the
pile of insults instead of listening to what's been said in disagreement.

> Grab the current grub package and add the source tarball to libguestfs Grab
> the current grub2 package and add the source tarball to libguestfs Build grub
> and grub2 as part of the libguestfs package Install the grub and grub2
> binaries as /usr/libexec/vm-grub{,2} and remove all the other grub/grub2
> files (they aren't needed) Maintain the binaries in libguestfs and fix any
> problems you find with specific guest OSes in your own package. This has the
> side benefit that libguestfs will be more portable as a result because you
> won't care about the host OSes boot loader installation (or lack thereof). If
> anyone complains about a grub/grub2 binary in libguestfs, tell them it's a
> necessary tool the base OS didn't want to provide reliably so you did what
> was necessary.

If you don't package the tools as "grub-install" and "grub" in root's PATH,
I don't honestly have much objection to this, with some caveats. Not least,
there's some work required just to make that plan work. Also, you probably
do want the patches that represent most of a decade of maintenance work.

-- 
         Peter