[arch-dev-public] Boot loaders in core/base

[Pierre Schmitz]

Hi,

while reviewing the core rebuild list I wondered if we should think
about chaining our default boot loader. Note: that wont affect existing
setups and people will still be able to use whatever they like.

ATM. we have grub1 in core/base and install that by default. The
problem is that this project is virtually dead for a long time now and
also not available on x86_64. Technically it has to be in the multilib
repo.

Grub2 is currently in extra. Upstream development is still in flux.
Imho its quite heavy and complex. 

An alternative successor would be extlinux from the syslinux package.
It's very simple, easy to configure, actively maintained and reliable.
Sure, it only supports booting from ext* and btrfs afaik but to be
honest, if you use any other FS you should have a separate /boot even
when using grub.

Summing up my suggestion for some time in the future would be:
* move extlinux/syslinux to core/base
* move grub1 to extra/multilib and remove it from base group
* keep grub2 in extra
* maybe also move lilo to extra
* of course keep all of them on the install cd

What do you think about this? At some point it might not be
sane/possible to keep grub1 as our default boot loader.

Greetings,

Pierre

-- 
Pierre Schmitz, https://users.archlinux.de/~pierre