Re: device syntax

["Yoshinori K. Okuji" <okuji@enbug.org>]

I prefer consistency among various architectures. Note that PC BIOS does 
not offer any name for drives. They are represented by numbers. "hd" 
and "fd" are aliases for numbers.

If we assume that the user knows her firmware very well, we don't need 
to provide "hd" or "fd", since the user should be able to specify 
numbers. Actually, specifying drives by numbers is supported by GRUB 
legacy, but nobody uses it, simply because it is not intuitive.

IMO, we should not assume that the user knows technical details. If we 
write an installer for Open Firmware-based machines, the user may not 
know anything about Open Firmware. The best thing for the user is that 
the user does not have to learn many things. If we provide a consistent 
interface, the user needs to study the single thing. Nothing else.

I think the important goal for GRUB is to provide an easy way for 
ordinary users and a complicated but still useful features for experts. 
So I propose always using simple aliases for drives. If you want to use 
a device name provided by your firmware explicitly, you could use this 
kind of syntax:

devalias foo "/pci@FF500000/isa@6/ide@i1f0/disk@0,0"
multiboot (foo,0)/boot/kernel

EFI uses more horrible device names. This is quoted from EFI How To 
Guide:

Acpi(PNP0A03,1)/PCI(0|0)/Scsi(Pun0,Lun0)/HD(Part1,Sig1B16CC00-ABD0-0)

If we use escape chacters, it becomes too unreadable.

Okuji