Comment 4 for bug 1723203

A fat partition is required, but it doesn't have to be mounted at /boot, and it doesn't need to contain kernels. It could have U-boot, grub2, or an efi bootloader on there for example.

IMO, if this is to be easily maintainable, then getting patches accepted into real debian is the way to go. All that then would be required is to use the raspbian keyring.

My preferred method is grub2 (no removing of sd cards!), but I understand that is too much for some people, and I'm not that bothered to argue for it.