I more or less think it doesn't matter that much how this comes out but
two thoughts came to me leading to an alternate idea:
Moving /boot to /biosboot reminds me of the "pkgdb" change. For those
not familiar:
https://pkgsrc.org/pkgdb-change/
Basically, a change in directory layout happens, and it was thought
that all would be ok. But really there was tremendous pain and it was
about 100x harder than believed -- and I am not trying to exaggerate.
The pain is ongoing still, even though this was December of 2020.
The same kind of "you can migrate or you can use the old location"
idea was present. The /biosboot change seems much less likely to blow
up because no tools do automated changes, and because if you have
/boot and /biosboot both, and one is read, nothing bad happens. Even
fixing an unbootable system -- as long as you have console access and
ability to boot rescue media -- is not that hard. But still, after
the pkgdb experience (I dealt with the fallout), I view "this will be
fine" claims for migrations with suspicion.
What problem are we really solving? It strikes me that across various
platforms there are a number of types of "boot partitions", and the
point is to have them all in the same place. But do we need them in
the same place, or do we need something to be able to find them in the
same place? Is that something people, to reduce confusion, or
programs, to reduce complexity? Given that changing established
practice raises "the pkgdb problem" and that there have been many
objections, what about:
1) Declare /bootfs as the preferred mountpoint for "the boot
partition", meaning some filesystem that is used for booting and is
not otherwise generally used. A boot partition more or less by
definition does not need to be mounted for system operation, and
would be used for updates and sysadmin of the boot process -- things
corresponding to running installboot and editing /boot.cfg on x86.
2) For platforms that don't want to adjust to /bootfs (and adjusting
raises "the pkgdb problem", say they should symlink /bootfs to where
the boot partition is.
This lets MI programs (but does that make sense?) look in /bootfs and
avoids asking anybody to migrate. Even if nothing uses the symlink,
mere presence will convey that /bootfs is the canonical path, reducing
whatever confusion /bootfs on x86 and /boot on evbarm might have
caused.
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