Subject: [bug#41066] [PATCH] gnu: bootloader: Improve support for chain loading.

From: Danny Milosavljevic <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 13 Dec 2020 15:42:14 +0100

Hi Stefan,

thanks!

Like mentioned in recent e-mails on the mailing list by Mark Weaver (in general,
not to you), please seperate cosmetic patches from non-cosmetic patches.

This is mostly so users can see which commits change what and why without
having to read through unrelated stuff.

Your latest patch does:

(1) Export chain-bootloader-installer.  I totally agree with Ludo's earlier
comment in that this is not the right abstraction for GENERAL bootloader
chaining (which would be a LOT more difficult/impossible to do).

Regardless, since we want to use this for efi-bootloader-chain, that should be
called "efi-chain-bootloader-installer" instead.

I'm not sure whether "efi-bootloader-chain-installer" would be better (use
whatever you think is best)--in any case, please do not make it seem like
this function is in any way generic, which it is absolutely not.

It only works if there is a special partition which contains the bootloader,
which is not a given (and was pretty uncommon until a few years ago--a
bootloader on a FILESYSTEM?  What? :) ).

(2) efi-bootloader-profile cosmetic comment and import cleanup.  Also, some
more cosmetic comment cleanup in some other procedure.  Please use extra
patch(es).

(3) Definition of procedure chain-bootloader-installer.  This procedure does
not fail if the conditions are weird (collection is not a directory,
bootloader-target is not a directory).  If there is no good reason for that,
please use (error "...") to make it fail instead of silently continuing.
If there are good reasons, nevermind.

Since this is merely moving the existing procedure, please, if you do
these changes I suggest, do those in an extra commit (so the moving commit
is clearing only moving the procedure, not changing it).

(4) gnu/bootloader/grub.scm font installer doesn't use symlinks anymore.
Fine, but maybe also make an extra patch for that.  Please use your judgement.