[syslinux] Module Versioning

[Pete Batard]

Hi Ferenc,

On 2016.03.07 17:55, Ferenc Wágner wrote:
> Why not install instead an arbitrary version of Syslinux and replace all
> .c32 files with the modules of the installed version?

I mentioned that in my previous mail. But I reckon it was easy to miss 
as that mail was rather long:


"One solution to avoid that would be to embed in Rufus all possible .c32 
modules from Syslinux, alongside with the 'ldlinux.sys' version we have, 
and replace them on the USB. This is not very realistic however (the 
application size would explode, and as more version of Syslinux get 
releases, we'd have more modules to embed)"


One thing you may not realize is that Rufus is less than 1MB in size, 
and I'd rather keep it that way (for various reason, one being the 
bandwidth costs associated with circa 2M downloads/month) and that the 
Syslinux files are only one of the various binaries I have to embed in 
it (there's also some FreeDOS, GRUB and Grub4DOS binaries, a FAT12 
UEFI:NTFS image as well as and other stuff).

Or, if your suggestion is not to embed but instead to only download the 
.c32 needed from a server, you do understand that some people may want 
to limit the number of files they have to fetch from the internet when 
creating a bootable USB drive. Also, because I have a 6.03 release 
version of Syslinux embedded in Rufus, I have some plans to add a 3rd 
fallback for the ldlinux.sys installation in case we can't connect to 
the internet, but the <major>.<minor> matches with one of the versions 
we embed (which should actually allow the creation of a working tails 
2.0.1 USB in Rufus, even for people who have no connection).

Besides, the point of modules is that, if someone doesn't find one that 
suits their purpose, they can create their own. So I may have to hunt 
for custom modules, used on some obscure ISO, to recompile them for 
whatever version I set, rather than go with the more generic and 
lightweight process I described...

Regards,

/Pete