<p>On the upside, progress has been good. We have multiple terminal support thanks to a new upstream snapshot (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/506707">#506707</a>), <code>update-grub</code> runs much faster (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/508834">#508834</a>, <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/574088">#574088</a>), we have DM-RAID support with a following wind (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/579919">#579919</a>), the new scheme with symlinks under <code>/dev/mapper/</code> works (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/550704">#550704</a>), we have basic support for btrfs <code>/</code> as long as you have something GRUB understands properly on <code>/boot</code> (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/540786">#540786</a>), we have full info documentation covering all the user-adjustable settings in <code>/etc/default/grub</code>, and a host of other smaller fixes. I'm hoping we can keep this up.</p>
-<p>If you'd like to help, contact me, especially if there's something particular that isn't being handled that you think you could work on. GRUB 2 is actually quite a pleasant codebase to work on once you get used to its layout; it's certainly much easier to fix bugs in than GRUB Legacy ever was, as far as I'm concerned. Thanks to tools like <code>grub-probe</code> and <code>grub-fstest</code>, it's very often possible to fix problems without needing to reboot for anything other than a final sanity check (although KVM certainly helps), and you can often debug very substantial bits of the boot loader - the bits that actually go wrong - using standard tools such as <code>strace</code> and <code>gdb</code>. If you have a sound knowledge of C and a decent level of understanding of the environment a boot loader needs to operate in - or for that matter specialist knowledge of interesting device types - then you should be able to find something to do.</p>
+<p>If you'd like to help, contact me, especially if there's something particular that isn't being handled that you think you could work on. GRUB 2 is actually quite a pleasant codebase to work on once you get used to its layout; it's certainly much easier to fix bugs in than GRUB Legacy ever was, as far as I'm concerned. Thanks to tools like <code>grub-probe</code> and <code>grub-fstest</code>, it's very often possible to fix problems without needing to reboot for anything other than a final sanity check (although KVM certainly helps), and you can often debug very substantial bits of the boot loader - the bits that actually go wrong - using standard tools such as <code>strace</code> and <code>gdb</code>. Upstream is helpful and I've been able to get many of the problems above fixed directly there. If you have a sound knowledge of C and a decent level of understanding of the environment a boot loader needs to operate in - or for that matter specialist knowledge of interesting device types - then you should be able to find something to do.</p>
~cjwatson / blog.git / commitdiff