Why does Arch suggest /boot for $esp mount point?

Question

Hi all,
Something has been bugging me, and I can't figure out online why this is the case. Arch always suggests to mount the $esp on /boot, and by reading the Beginner's Guide/Installation wiki pages (and forums), it looks like the reasons are:
- gummiboot upstream expects it there
- pacman can only update kernels in /boot
Other distributions suggest to mount the $esp on /boot/efi, and this has the good effect, that all files of distributions are located in subfolders ($esp/EFI/opensuse/, for example), and are not littering the root $esp folder. If every distribution did what Arch does, then on a multi-distro the root folder of the $esp would have every single kernel/fallback img.
I noticed the FHS doesn't have a standard mount point/folder for the $esp, either.
Is there another reason that Arch suggests this?
Thanks

Answer 1

Gummiboot's method only works if distros keep the /boot folder free of files, and use directories to cleanly categorise kernels, etc. I have yet to find a distribution that does this.
"Works" is relative here. Gummiboot doesn't do things the way you want; that's fine, because a) you don't use it; and b) you can always organize your EFI images as you see fit. Gummiboot will still accomplish its intended task: booting a working Linux kernel from an EFI image. The Gummiboot Arch wiki page states that the ESP must be mounted at /boot for it to work, but that's it. The UEFI wiki page doesn't mention mounting at boot at all---only to /boot/efi. The EFISTUB page mentions that if you don't mount to /boot, you need to mount the ESP somewhere and manually copy the images to the ESP. The GRUB wiki page doesn't make statements on where the ESP should be mounted, but does make it clear that GRUB needs to be told where the ESP is mounted during installation. The Beginner's Guide does recommend mounting the ESP to /boot, and then links to another page with more information.
Reading the Beginner's Guide without following the links may give the impression that mounting to /boot is something of a requirement, but it depends on the use case.You have four options when booting from UEFI: rEFInd, Gummiboot, GRUB and  EFISTUB. The first requires the ESP to be mount at /boot/efi, like it or not. The second requires it to be mounted at /boot, like it or not. The latter two have no strict requirements of where the ESP be mounted, but mounting anywhere other than /boot requires extra work on the part of the user. Yes, if you mount the ESP to /boot and run multiple distributions then the kernel images are still going to clutter the /boot directory, which is exactly what happens if you share a /boot partition between distributions no matter what (and as I alluded to earlier, there are cases in which this is necessary). UEFI has nothing to do with that, and it's one reason that each distribution has its own naming conventions for its kernel image (a Linux kernel built from source will always be called "bzImage" regardless of the distribution its built on). Arguably, none of that matters unless you're manually moving and deleting kernel images and get confused about which one is which---a case that almost never arises nowadays, and should never arise for the typical desktop user.