Re: grub2 miscelanea questions (1/2)

[Marco Gerards]

adrian15 <address@hidden> writes:

>       
>       Dear grub2 developers, here there are some questions about grub2 that I
> have that would have generated too many little emails.
>
> 1)lst files on a grub2 floppy
> ==============================
>
>       As I told you in another email, in order to build my grub2 floppy I did
> a soft link from /usr/local/lib/grub/i386-pc to
> /home/adrian/Desktop/gnu/grub2/grub2_2007_05_31 (compiled sources dir)
> and my floppy is full of lst files.
>
>       Usually in a grub2 floppy there are not any lst file, isn't it?
>
> 2) What are these lst files for, are they useful or are they like the C
> .o files, only needed for compilation purposes?

Most of them are for compilation.

> 3) Why any grub2.cfg file (I suppose it's the substitute for menu.lst)
> is inside the grub2 source code?

What do you mean?

> 4) Why any doc folder is inside the grub2 source code?

There is?  We need documentation...
        
> 5) grub2 lacks
> ==================
> 5.1) pager
> -------------
>
> When I want to do a big ls the output does not stop screen by screen...
> Is there any hidden pager that I do not know?
> Maybe is not implemented yet?

set pager=1

It just isn't documented :-/

> 5.2) Chainload DEVICES
> ------------------------
>
> How the hell do you boot windows?
> Maybe from a file that has inside it the first 512 bytes from the
> Windows partition?

chainload (hd0,1)+
boot

(depending on the partition it is on, of course)

> 6) Compulsory Argument dilemma
> ================================      
> If I run help I can seen things like this:
>       
> ls [-f|-l|-s] NAME
>
> and
>
> [ EXPRESSION ]

Yes?

> If [ ] means optional it should also mean optional in the case of the
> test alias [ .!!!

What do you mean?

> 7) set help incomplete
> ========================
> Set help should say that if no argument is set then it shows all the
> environment variables.

Why would it?  Only using set shows all env. variables.

> 8) exported and no exported variables
> =======================================
> Why the set does not show any difference (like a * in the beginning)
> about the exported and no exported variables (with the export command)

It isn't implemented :-)

> 9) help does not complain when no command help is available
> =============================================================
>
> The commands:
>       help marco_g
>       help okuji
>       help dachaac
>
> do not complain at all, and it is not a "hidden pascua egg" from these
> people,... any non-command has the same answer: NONE.

I don't need help, GRUB 2 does ;-)

> I think there should be something like:
>
> Error: This command does not exist.
>
> Or better even: It should prompt all the commands.

How it currently works is looking at the first characters.  For
example try "help l".

> 10) help --all
> =================
> In grub-legacy when typing help some commands were some sort of hidden.
> However if you typed help --all these commands were also shown.
>
> Do we need this functionality in grub2?

Are there hidden commands for which this is important?  In that case,
yes.

> 11) help help
> ===============
> Running help help says:
> Usage: help [PATTERN ...]
> Show a help message.
>
> It should say that if no argument is entered then all the commands are
> shown.
> And it should say: Show a command help described in PATTERN. (Or
> something like this).

Feel free to send in patches.

> 12) ls and -h argument
> ========================
>
> This is not an error but it curious. You can ask for the help of command
> with this:
> command -h
> however
> ls -h
> works in a different way.
>
> I suppose we may have the same problem with '-u' in the future.

Ehm, I am not sure.  You mean `-h' is short for help and we should
remove it?

--
Marco