Re: Configuration option to disable os-prober?

[Robert Millan]

On Fri, Jul 10, 2009 at 09:19:12PM +0100, Colin Watson wrote:
> On Fri, Jul 10, 2009 at 07:31:21PM +0200, Robert Millan wrote:
> > On Wed, Jul 08, 2009 at 04:38:23PM +0100, Colin Watson wrote:
> > > Some people seem to want to disable os-prober for various reasons (e.g.
> > > they have lots of test installations lying around that they don't
> > > normally want to get in the way, or they don't want installations on
> > > external drives to be included permanently in the boot menu, etc.). Now,
> > > they can just remove the os-prober package, but that doesn't really
> > > scale as other packages are allowed to depend on it too.
> > > 
> > > Perhaps we could have a configuration option for this? Patch attached.
> > 
> > Hi,
> > 
> > I'm unfamiliar with os-prober.  What other purposes are there for installing
> > it?  grub-mkconfig is the only one I can think of, so the situation you
> > describe sounds very unlikely.  Could you ellaborate?
> 
> Well, I happen to know that our graphical installer depends on it :-),
> and sometimes people install it for testing purposes (or it accidentally
> remains installed). More generally though I'm not a fan of "remove this
> package" as a configuration mechanism.

Ok then.

> > I'm concerned about the number of options in grub-mkconfig in general.  It
> > has a tendency to grow a lot, and unfortunately they're not documented.
> 
> Maybe that's amenable to being addressed in itself - perhaps a manual
> page? (info is fine for complete manuals for large systems but not
> really great for quick-reference kind of things.)

We generate manpages dynamically using help2man.  Improving --help output
would improve the manpage, and it'd be nice to have all of this documented.

But this is just my "wish of the day".  It shouldn't be a stopper for adding
this option if you need it.

-- 
Robert Millan

  The DRM opt-in fallacy: "Your data belongs to us. We will decide when (and
  how) you may access your data; but nobody's threatening your freedom: we
  still allow you to remove your data and not access it at all."