Re: [gentoo-dev] [PATCH 1/1]: profiles/use.desc: add efi global use flag

[Andrew Ammerlaan <andrewammerlaan@gentoo.org>]

On 14/07/2023 19:11, Mike Gilbert wrote:
> On Fri, Jul 14, 2023 at 5:07 AM Sam James <sam@gentoo.org> wrote:
>>
>>
>> Andrew Ammerlaan <andrewammerlaan@gentoo.org> writes:
>>
>>> Hi all,
>>>
>>> Currently we have 7 packages defining the efi flag and an additional 2
>>> defining the uefi flag. These flags do the same thing, add support for
>>> (U)EFI booting. I therefore propose we introduce efi as a new global
>>> flag and later rename the uefi flag to efi in sys-apps/fwupd and
>>> sys-apps/ipmicfg.
>>>
>>> I don't have a strong preference between the efi or uefi flags, but
>>> since a majority of the packages has chosen efi I suggest we go with
>>> that.
>>
>> Let's do USE=uefi please - UEFI is the modern name for it, and EFI is
>> legacy. I'd like to avoid another USE=ssl situation (where we're
>> stuck with it forever given we have no mechanism for USE flag renames,
>> despite the fact that it's really TLS now).
> 
> Any thoughts on grub_platforms_efi-32 and grub_platforms_efi-64?
> 
> If we want to rename USE flags, I would probably take the opportunity
> to eliminate the GRUB_PLATFORMS USE_EXPAND altogether.
> 

For grub specifically there is another thing to consider. Currently 
emerging grub does not actually build an efi executable, this (I think) 
is done when you 'grub-install'. This is unfortunate because that makes 
it the only bootloader that you can't conveniently sign with 
secureboot.eclass.

I briefly looked into the problem and there is 'grub-mkstandalone' which 
could be used to generate (and then sign) a grub efi executable. But how 
this would then work with 'grub-install' I do not know. I don't use grub 
myself, but maybe someone who does can look into this.

Best regards,
Andrew