Hello, I would like to outline the usefulness of possible ports. It's not exhaustive it's more like list of remarks. 1) the smallest embedded systems and microcontrollers. These ones simply don't have any space to store multiple kernels or any interactivity whatsoever. On such platforms the only grub usefulness remaining will probably be supplying an upcoming multiboot2 protocol and perhaps disaster recovery but on such systems one usually wants to shave off every possible byte and they often use specialised ISA so basically everything needs to be rewritten or heavily ported so even this usefullness is reduced.
2) Bigger embedded systems. Those may have enough space for multiple kernels and grub as well as some means to communicate. This would allow a disaster recovery by choosing another kernel or changing kernel parameters. Additionally these systems are likely to pick a more standard ISA so it will allow more easy porting of payloads to this platforms by using multiboot2 Intresting platforms: too many to list. 3) Handhelds and game consoles. These ones are pretty much like normal desktop computer except having less power and a different communication system. So additionally to normal port interface features would have to be adapted but then all usual grub advantages kick in. Intresting ISAs: ARM, SuperH, PowerPC (+Cell). Interesting platforms: too many to list. 4) Standrard desktops and laptops. It's the most interesting target, doesn't even need to be discussed. The only systems I'm aware of in this category and not yet implemented are Fuloong mini and ARM based systems 5a) Deprecated hardware. Not first target but is acceptable if doesn't put too much problems for other ports. The pre-PCI systems are 12+ years old and while some of them will live for at least another 15 years they run out of parts which are even just electrically compatible. Taking this road may leave us with a situation when only about 10 working machines exist in the world, 2 users interested, 0 developpers and huge effort spent. Example ISAs: m68k, vax, sparc32 5b) PCI systems are another story. With GRUB having always more native drivers these systems can use commodity PCI parts even if they aren't supported by normal firmware as long as fimware is able to locate grub. If e.g. a keyboard controller is burned Interesting ISAs: Alpha. Interesting platforms: Alphas, Old world macintoshes, SGI mips. 6) Paravirtualized environments are often used for security reasons. In this context it's preferable to have a bootloader inside virtual machine rather than outside. Some paravirtualized environments are carbon copy of some real machines. Those need no special support but other platforms do Interesting platforms: xen Interesting ISAs: i386, x86_64, ppc, ia64 7) Servers have quite a special requirement and usually aren't rebooted often yet alone changing of bootloaders. But it's a worthy target as it often facilitates reusing kernels from desktop class. The problem is to get such machine for testing. They often cost a lot and usually used with thousand of simultaneous users logged i so you can't really ask someone to have 10 reboots in one day to test new grub Interesting architectures: ia64, system z. I'm not aware of any other architecture in this category not currently supported since we have support for i386 BIOS and EFI, PPC OFW and sparc OFW. -- Regards Vladimir 'φ-coder/phcoder' Serbinenko
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