I think perl could be used -- at least a while ago, compiling the
53c8xx SCSI driver required perl (it assembled the firmware source
code using an assembler written in perl). Honestly, these days, I
think sed, perl and possibly awk can be considered essential enough
that they should be on any system advanced enough to have a C
compiler.
I would personally prefer a simple parseable config.in format which
could be modified by a front end of one's choice (based on a shell
script, dialog, a Tcl/Tk control panel, you name it..). Having a
user-friendly configuration utility would also let distribution
authors have "kernel configuration" as a much more reasonable
install-time option, reducing the number of people who just use the
install kernel.
/hpa
-- PGP public key available - finger hpa@yggdrasil.com "The earth is but one country, and mankind its citizens." -- Baha'u'llah