Bug#239111: Grub is shockingly bad code

[Robert Millan]

On Sun, Jan 11, 2009 at 05:16:03PM +0000, Steve McIntyre wrote:
> Yes, I've looked at the grub2 source and I'm much happier. It doesn't
> look like a novice had written it, which is a major improvement. I'm
> still curious WTH anybody would think the nested functions are a good
> thing, though...

It's kind of a tradition here.  I think the point is just to limit the
scope of "hook functions" same way as is usually done for variables.

> >As for the bug severity, this bug has been around for a while, and we never
> >considered it to be Release Critical.  D-I avoids using GRUB Legacy when user
> >selected XFS, and rightly so.  As I said, with GRUB 2 it's going to be
> >different (if someone wants to know more about the technical details on how
> >we changed our approach, feel free to contact me).
> 
> The thing I'm more bothered about right now is what will happen to
> people with existing systems who upgrade. That's why Rob raised this
> bug to grave: his remote system locked up as part of an upgrade. What
> do you plan to do to stop this happening again?

The whole approach is wrong, so maybe it makes sense to avoid it, or maybe
it's too late for that, and we should issue a critical debconf warning when
XFS is detected.

I will have to think about 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."