grub-pe2elf

[Robert Millan]

Hi,

On a recent discussion on IRC, Bean pointed out that grub-pe2elf is essentially
a workaround for a bug in objcopy.

Bean explained that this bug is quite obvious.  It seems Christian sent them
a patch, but it hasn't been applied (I don't know if it was rejected, or just
ignored, Christian could you explain?).

Back in 2007, Christian proposed an ad-hoc solution for converting from PE to
ELF:

  http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/grub-devel/2007-11/msg00174.html

which was rejected (see my comment and Marco's reply).

Later in July 2008, Bean added grub-pe2elf to the repository.

I keep thinking the same I thought in 2007.  I don't agree that we should
add such workarounds just because objcopy has a bug.  binutils is a GNU
program.  It is free software and community-maintained.  If it has bugs,
we should be working with them instead of reimplementing their work.

First of all, I'm worried that we have discussions to decide things and they
are later forgotten or ignored.  Bean, please can you provide some explanation
on what happened?

Also, I think this commit should be reverted (at least the part that adds
grub-pe2elf).  Also, I'd like to hear input on what happened with Christian's
binutils patch, why it wasn't applied, etc.

Nevertheless, it's not an obligation for us to support win32.  As long as we
can do it sanely, I'm fine with it, but I don't want to see GRUB dragged into
a situation in which we need to preserve win32 support at all costs.

Our primary target are GNU-based systems, as well as other free software
systems, specially those that rely on GRUB as their default bootloader.

-- 
Robert Millan

  The DRM opt-in fallacy: "Your data belongs to us. We will decide when (and
  how) you may access your data; but nobody's threatening your freedom: we
  still allow you to remove your data and not access it at all."