Re: Linux 2.6.25-rc8

[Josh Boyer]

On Thu, 2008-04-03 at 15:08 +1100, Paul Mackerras wrote:
> Linus Torvalds writes:
> 
> > Well, that part isn't the one that I think is bothersome - I just wonder 
> > if the whole "defconfig" mess is worth keeping with the kernel at _all_.
> > 
> > It also causes tons of noise whenever I happen to do something like "git 
> > grep CONFIG_XYZZY" to see where some config variable is used etc.
> > 
> > So I was more wondering whether maybe there could be better ways of doing 
> > that whole thing. 
> 
> Having the defconfigs seems to be useful for the embedded folks,
> judging by the number of defconfigs they have.  They generally have a
> defconfig for each reference board.

I'm thinking of getting rid of the board specific defconfigs for PowerPC
4xx actually.  We already have ppc44x_defconfig that builds most boards,
and ppc40x_defconfig will be coming soon.

Of course, that might not be possible for other architectures to do.

> Those defconfigs would be much smaller and change much less often if
> they could be expressed as a delta from some other defconfig.  So we'd
> end up with a small number of base defconfigs plus a set of board
> defconfigs that would say effectively "use the options from that other
> defconfig, plus turn this on and that off".

IIRC, Fedora builds their kernels using such a mechanism, though it's
done in the RPM specfile with a perl script.  Maybe that's something to
look at to start with.

josh

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