From: Colin Watson Date: Fri, 4 Jun 2010 22:00:54 +0000 (+0100) Subject: extra credit X-Git-Url: https://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/ucgi/~cjwatson/git?a=commitdiff_plain;h=1428e911d89f300cbd8a6c9afc5705613f7773ee;p=blog.git extra credit --- diff --git a/debian/2010-06-04-hacking-on-grub2.txt b/debian/2010-06-04-hacking-on-grub2.txt index 739d4fb7..51d722c9 100644 --- a/debian/2010-06-04-hacking-on-grub2.txt +++ b/debian/2010-06-04-hacking-on-grub2.txt @@ -55,4 +55,4 @@ Hacking on grub2

On the upside, progress has been good. We have multiple terminal support thanks to a new upstream snapshot (#506707), update-grub runs much faster (#508834, #574088), we have DM-RAID support with a following wind (#579919), the new scheme with symlinks under /dev/mapper/ works (#550704), we have basic support for btrfs / as long as you have something GRUB understands properly on /boot (#540786), we have full info documentation covering all the user-adjustable settings in /etc/default/grub, and a host of other smaller fixes. I'm hoping we can keep this up.

-

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 grub-probe and grub-fstest, 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 strace and gdb. 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.

+

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 grub-probe and grub-fstest, 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 strace and gdb. 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.