Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: Switchup-mode and boottime selector? Was: eselect init

[Luca Barbato <lu_zero@gentoo.org>]

On 05/29/2013 10:55 PM, William Hubbs wrote:
> On Wed, May 29, 2013 at 09:56:00PM +0200, Tom Wijsman wrote:
>>> There are a couple of other possible approaches...
>>>
>>> 1) If the 2 systems can achieve peacefull co-existance (i.e. no
>>> identically-named files with different contents) then simply have 2
>>> boot entries in /etc/lilo.conf (or grub equivalant)...
>>>
>>> [SNIP to shorten mail]
>>
>> Users can already do this, this isn't a solution.
>>
>> We want to make this easier towards the user, therefore doing heavy
>> discussion to exhaust all the alternatives and maybe someone's
>> interested in implementing one of them that appears most feasible.
> 
> Since users can already do this, why are we bothering with re-inventing
> the wheel? How does running an eselect init command make it easier for
> the user than telling them to edit their boot loader config file?

Because to me and many other EFI users is quite annoying having to
rebuild the kernel or do something ugly such as editing a binary file.

Because it isn't just editing a file or rebuilding the kernel but also
have a short trip in single mode to switch back and forth inittab.

Because addons such as bootchart2 or e4rat would be much simpler to use
through eselect init than doing the whole bootloader or kernel-rebuild
dance.

> Gentoo users are expected to build their kernel and write their boot
> loader config file initially, so why are we trying to dumb this down?

Because usually we aren't linux from scratch and we try to automate as
much as we could, leaving the options there to be selected =)

lu