Hi, The base-system project would like to put forward a plan to sunset GRUB Legacy, sys-boot/grub:0 (grub-0.97). What does this cover? --------------------- - sys-boot/grub:0 - sys-boot/grub-static What does this NOT cover? ------------------------- - sys-boot/grub:2 - app-emulation/xen-pvgrub [1] - app-emulation/grub-xen-host [1] Why should it go? ----------------- - No longer supported by upstream - no upstream fixes at all for 5+ years - very fragile to toolchain changes. Why does it need to stay at all? -------------------------------- - grub:0 is still used by legacy systems where the upgrade is non-trivial (eg. re-partitioning), or not supported (eg. vendor clouds) - grub-static was heavily used in specific profiles [2] where the build system produced a grub that didn't work properly. I think (but would like confirmation) that the grub-static use cases are no longer in use. What are other distributions doing? ----------------------------------- - Ubuntu shipped both versions of grub for Xenial, but dropped them entirely for Zesty & Artful. - Debian: still offers grub-legacy, but defaults to grub-2. - Fedora: hasn't shipped grub-0 in years. - CentOS: 6 ships grub-0.97 only, 7 ships grub2 only. The plan: --------- - To the extent possible, no new installs should use grub:0. - package.mask grub:0 - Last-rite grub-static if not needed. - No new functionality will be accepted - Outstanding feature patches/bugs will be closed (e.g. btrfs, tpm) - Fixes to keep it building correctly will be accepted (e.g. gcc-6) - base-system, as a project, will only maintain grub:2 from this point forward. - metadata.xml will mark base-system as maintaining grub:2 only. - metadata.xml will list explicit grub:0 maintainers. - This is only available while there is sufficient skilled manpower/maintainers. Open questions: -------------- - Are there more maintainers willing to put their name in the hat? - Are there existing use cases that I've missed, where migration to grub-2 CANNOT be done? - Are there other use cases that need grub-static? [1] app-emulation/xen-pvgrub & app-emulation/grub-xen-host are maintained by the Xen project. app-emulation/xen-pvgrub is the grub:0 part, and probably also deserving of sunset. app-emulation/grub-xen-host depends on grub:2 and builds a specific config. [2] hardened, no-multilib, mixed 64-bit kernel/32-ul systems. -- Robin Hugh Johnson Gentoo Linux: Dev, Infra Lead, Foundation Asst. Treasurer E-Mail : robbat2@gentoo.org GnuPG FP : 11ACBA4F 4778E3F6 E4EDF38E B27B944E 34884E85 GnuPG FP : 7D0B3CEB E9B85B1F 825BCECF EE05E6F6 A48F6136