Well, I don't want to stop or slow down anyone, you can of course reuse bootmenu code as you wish :-) Here are just few random comments:

- with deb package one doesn't need sudo gainroot, you can modify sudoers and get rid of the hack

- it may be good to have basic bootmenu flasher deb with no dependencies on gui stuff and python (actually with no dependency at all if possible), the gui can be separate deb for those who really need it EDIT: oh, the deblet gui installer is separate so disregard this

- current code with merging ITEM_WHATEVER is hardcoded in the script, this can be made generic by not including it directly via '.' but parsing/evaluating it to rewrite any 'WHATEVER=xxx' line automatically into MENU_X_WHATEVER=xxx line

- would be nice to modularize both support for different versions of initfs (devices, firmwares) and also optional features (dropbear, telnet, framebuffer console, in future also some advance recovery tools in initfs) current way of including everything inside is not ideal. Also patching Nokia linuxrc should be done differently, currently full modified linuxrc is stored for each different firmware. This could allow autopatching unknown new firmware.

- merging final bootmenu.conf can be done already in flasher, not at boot time (for speed and smaller initfs runtime code with less bugs, bugs at boot time are nasty), those parts can be still kept separate (in initfs) for future merging. Still some on the fly modification when already booted into menu would be nice too, so maybe the merging could stay in initfs too but not in normal execution path.

- I'd like to keep simple .tar.gz format too, some people prefer it, sometimes you don't have system with full debian installed or you don't want to mess with repositories so the code should be written to be both buildable into deb with /var /lib /bin /etc paths and one directory

So these are things I have planned. I certainly cannot tell people what they should do but if you want to help with some of those ideas instead of doing yet another quick bootmenu flasher hack, it would be nice ;-)