Re: About the CLI of both grub-mkrescue versions

[Thomas Schmitt]

Hi,

me:
> > grub-mkiso.c

Andrei Borzenkov:
> What's the point of having to maintain two versions instead of one?

Well, as stated:

> > This would avoid to bother scripting users of grub-mkrescue
> > or maintainers of things like
> >   http://www.unix.com/man-page/linux/1/GRUB-MKRESCUE/

Besides sabotageing scripts which use old grub-mkrescue,
the current state of grub-mkrescue.c also makes it hard to
write scripts which work with both, GRUB 2.00 and 2.02.

The documentation of the current state of grub-mkrescue.c
would have to be something like:

"Find out what version of grub-mkrescue you are running.
 If it is the new one of GRUB 2.02 or later, then use
 argument "--" between its own arguments and the arguments
 by which you announce your payload files to xorriso.
 If it is the old one, then do not use argument "--" unless you
 want xorriso to end its mkisofs emulation and thus to demand
 native xorriso commands as further input."

With my proposal it would rather be:

"grub-mkrescue is frozen and will not be augmented by new
 features. The new program grub-mkiso takes the same options
 as grub-mkrescue plus some more.
 The main difference between both is that you have to
 separate the grub-mkiso options from the xorriso -as mkisofs
 options by a double dash "--", which will not be forwarded
 to xorriso."

The compatibility mode will not need permanent maintainance.
It will rather be an alternative way to override the defaults
of some of the global variables in grub-mkrescue.c. Once the
legacy parser function is written, it can stay as it is.
Only if the variable names or meanings change, this has to be
reflected in the legacy parser function.

The other tasks which i mentioned, have to be addressed anyway,
because currently the documentation of grub-mkrescue is
flatly wrong in the program and in the .texi file.


Have a nice day :)

Thomas