Como foi dito anteriormente, o plano de manutenção do GRUB no Debian continua com toda força. Hoje fiz o upload da nova versão para o Debian. O grub 0.97-1 realmente deu bastante trabalho pois foram vários releases entre 0 0.95 e o 0.97. Vários patches precisaram ser removidos ou alterados e correções precisaram ser trazidas de outras distribuições. Vocês podem analisar o log do upload abaixo:

grub (0.97-1) unstable; urgency=low

  * New upstream release: (closes: #303967)
    Patches:
    - 2gb_limit.diff: resync;
    - kfbsd_chainload.diff: dropped; not needed;
    - fwritable-strings_remove.diff: dropped, merged upstream;
    - console_current_color.diff: dropped, merged upstream;
    - xsi_mkbimage.diff: dropped, merged upstream;
    - smp-imps.diff: dropped, not needed;
    - revert_grub-set-default.diff: dropped, not needed;
    - savedefault.diff: disabled, don't apply anymore; (reopen: #195833)
    - static_subfunc.diff: dropped, not needed;
    Fixes:
    -  Fallback to a sane console if fail to set graphical mode; (closes: #267224)
  * Doesn't output a error when no kernel is installed. (closes: #336730)
  * Make update-grub output consistent. (closes: #336729)
  * Applied patch from Antonio Kanouras 
    to remove bashism from update-grub and allow it to run with
    dash. (closes: #337145)
  * Add a watch file to be easier to identify upstream releases
  * debian/patches/fix_amd64_compile.diff: Added. Ensure that we build in
    64bit mode in x86_64 arch. (closes: #337288)
  * Start to use automake1.9 when building.
  * Applied patch from Marco Amadori  to
    document, in menu.lst, to avoid _default saved_ option in case of
    being use dmraid.
  * Applied patch from Jason Thomas  to give a example
    how to use kernel options to specific kernel version. (closes: #338371)
  * Applied patches from Andrew Stribblehill  and Tony
    Mancill  to fix grub-floppy to don't falsely
    reports "stage1" as missing. (closes: #288678)
  * Applied patch from Free Ekanayaka  to allow custom
    title name in menu.lst. (closes: #298110, #138318)
  * Applied patch from Georg Wittenburg  to
    allow specific options to default entry. (closes: #266101)
  * Fix documentation installing. (closes: #339687)
  * Clean the source code. (closes: #340656)
  * Patches stolen from other vendors:
    - [SuSE] initrd_max_address.diff: added. This change the max address
      to host initrd image and add a safe default value in case of failure;
    - [Fedora] splashimage_help.diff: added. Add documentation about
      splashimage option; (closes: #200269)
    - [Fedora] grub-install_addsyncs.diff: added. Ensure that filesystem
      caches are flushed;
    - [Fedora] geometry-26kernel.diff: added. Add geometry detection since
      kernel 2.6 doesn't do that anymore, for IDE devices;
    - [Fedora] odirect.diff: added. Use O_DIRECT to avoid cache issues.
    - [Mandriva] graphics.diff: updated;

 -- Otavio Salvador   Thu, 24 Nov 2005 22:52:31 -0200

Chegando nesse ponto, agora, irei começar a mexer também no GRUB2. O GRUB2 é a nova versão que está sendo desenvolvida e, entre outras coisa, é multi-plataforma. A versão atual já suporta i386, amd64, powerpc e sparc64 (ainda em desenvolvimento inicial) e sendo assim será um grande avanço para o Debian possuir um único bootloader capaz de gerenciar várias arquiteturas.

O pacote do grub2 não deve ser utilizado em produção pois ele ainda está em fase de desenvolvimento.