PUPA

Important Notice: This project is not used any more, because we moved our effort to GRUB 2. See GRUB web site, for more information.

PUPA is a research project for the next generation of GNU GRUB. The most important goal is to make GNU GRUB cleaner, safer, more robust, and more powerful.

Our tasks are as follows:

Create a compact core image. This will make Stage 1.5 unnecessary.
Add support for dynamic loading to the core image, so that it can extend itself at the run time rather than at the build time.
Add real memory management, to make GNU GRUB more extensible.
Add a more object-oriented framework for file systems, files, devices, drives, terminals, commands, and OS loaders.
Add support for internationalization. This includes support for non-ASCII character code, message catalogs like gettext, fonts, graphics console, and so on.
Add an actual localization, based on the above internationalization support. We will target on Japanese as the first step.
Segregate code specific to i386-pc from generic code, to make GNU GRUB portable.
Add support for cross-platform installation.
Develop additional software packages which will help our project and hopefully other projects.

We might tackle on these issues as well:

Add a scripting language, to make GNU GRUB more customizable.
Add support for other architectures (such as UltraSparc and PowerPC).

This project is supported by Information-technology Promotion Agency, Japan.

Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permitted in any medium, provided this notice is preserved.