On Fri, Jul 31, 2009 at 11:05 -0500, Boyd Stephen Smith Jr. wrote:
> In <[🔎] 20090731124204.GW7828@keuner.winnegan.fake>, Siggy Brentrup wrote:
> >On Fri, Jul 31, 2009 at 16:48 +0800, Timothy Wu wrote:
> >> On Fri, Jul 31, 2009 at 3:53 PM, frank <frank@anotheria.net> wrote:
> >> > Check out the menu.lst file.
> >>
> >> Whoa! I didn't know text hidden in those comments are actually in-use.
>
> They aren't really comments. Reading the file would have clarified that.
>
> >ARRRRRRRRRRRRRRGs, that's the 1st program I saw in >35 year of
> >programming that analyzes comments to change behaviour (apart from
> >documentation generators).
>
> 1. It is well documented. Basically everything you need to know is in the
> file and there are additional man pages.
Well documented mis-features still are mis-features.
> 2. The lines starting this a single '#' are comments to *grub*. The lines
> between the markers starting with a single '#' are not comments *update-
> grub*. ^
to ?
> 3. Lines starting with a single '#' are comments in C *unless* the '#' is
> immediately followed by a pre-processor command. This is similar -- you can
> think of update-grub as a GRUB menu.lst pre-processor.
_This_statement_is_wrong_. # in C is a preprocessing token, look into
the Ansi C standard ISO/IEC 9899:TC3 commonly known as c99; I found a
reference to a PDF on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C99, but be
warned, it's no easy reading.
On an aside gnu cpp deviates from my reading of the standard in that
it removes comments; but that matters only insofar as cpp output is
even less human readable than it might be.
> 4. It's been that way for a very long time. I'm not sure how GRUB2 will
> affect it, but I don't think it will change for GRUB1 for the foreseeable
> future.
An argument starting like this never has been very convincing :)
I can't remember seeing anything like this when I last edited a
menu.lst back in '04. I still have a not yet recovered root FS on my
vaio, nothing indicating that change can be found, must have occurred
in the meantime. Be assured if I had been with the project when it
occurred, I'd argued against it. IMHO this is configuration that can
and should be handled using debconf, but I'm almost certain YMDV.
With grub being replaced by grub2 all this doesn't really matter.
Regs
Siggy
--
Please don't Cc: me when replying, I might not see either copy.
bsb-at-psycho-dot-informationsanarchistik-dot-de
or: bsb-at-psycho-dot-i21k-dot-de
O< ascii ribbon campaign - stop html mail - www.asciiribbon.org
Attachment:
signature.asc
Description: Digital signature