Re: grub-install hidden options weirdness

[Andrey Borzenkov]

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В Wed, 25 Jun 2014 10:13:59 -0400
Phillip Susi <address@hidden> пишет:

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> A user complained that grub-install has some undocumented options such
> as --root-directory.  I started looking into it and noticed a lot of
> weirdness here.
> 
> 1)  It seems that --root-directory used to just be used to find the
> boot directory by appending "boot" to rootdir.  --boot-directory was
> added as a more appropriate way to directly specify that.  Shouldn't
> the man page mention that it still accepts --root-directory for
> backwards compatibility but it's use is depreciated?
> 

This could be considered as endorsement to continue to use it ...  

> 2)  It seems that --root-directory has been overloaded to specify the
> efi system directory.  This seems like it was the wrong thing to do
> and again, is totally undocumented.
> 

We already have --efi-directory. Why would you want to endorse this
archaic usage?  

> 3)  It appears that --grub-setup used to allow you to specify an
> alternate program to run instead of grub-setup.  Now it seems to check
> if its argument is "setup" and if so, has the same affect as
> - --no-bootsector, and otherwise has no effect.  This seems completely
> wrong.
> 

This covers two common use cases known to me a) using it from within
build directory with --grub=setup=./grub-setup and b) using it to
disable actual installation with --grub-setup=/bin/true. Current code
is compatible with them.

I know that some people did creative things with grub-setup
replacement ... but it normally can be done using grub-mkimage +
whatever replaces grub-setup. The only thing I miss in this case is
autodetection of necessary modules and prefix. May be grub-probe can
be extended.

> 4)  The similar arguments --grub-mkrelpath, --grub-probe,
> - --grub-editenv, and --font are accepted and completely ignored.  If
> the option no longer works, it should be removed rather than silently
> ignored.  At least that way you don't have people using it and
> wondering why it isn't working.
> 

Again - common use case is using just built grub without installing it.
Do you have example of other non-trivial use cases?
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