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Message-Id: <1207227337.3224.6.camel@vader.jdub.homelinux.org>
Date: Thu, 03 Apr 2008 07:55:37 -0500
From: Josh Boyer <jwboyer@...il.com>
To: Paul Mackerras <paulus@...ba.org>
Cc: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@...ux-foundation.org>,
Linux Kernel Mailing List <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>,
davej@...hat.com
Subject: Re: Linux 2.6.25-rc8
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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