linux-kernel - Re: diet-kconfig: a script to trim unneeded kconfigs

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Date:	Thu, 18 Sep 2008 22:17:22 +0200
From:	Takashi Iwai <tiwai@...e.de>
To:	Mauro Carvalho Chehab <mchehab@...radead.org>
Cc:	linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org
Subject: Re: diet-kconfig: a script to trim unneeded kconfigs

At Thu, 18 Sep 2008 12:25:41 -0300,
Mauro Carvalho Chehab wrote:
> 
> Hi Takashi,
> 
> On Wed, 17 Sep 2008 01:55:26 +0200
> Takashi Iwai <tiwai@...e.de> wrote:
> 
> > Hi,
> > 
> > a topic that just came up in kernel summit is a script to remove
> > unneeded kernel configs automatically to reduce the compile time.
> > Incidentally, I already wrote such a script during the last SUSE hack
> > week a couple of weeks ago, so I'd like to share here, hopefully to
> > give an idea for further improvements.
> > 
> > The script checks the currently loaded modules and trims other
> > CONFIG_XXX=m simply, and tries make oldconfig, and writes out the
> > resultant .config in the current directory after some checks. 
> > You can specify the config file via option,  as default, it reads from
> > /proc/config.gz. 
> 
> I agree with Giacomo: you should also check for /boot/config-`uname -r`
> and /boot/config-`uname -r`.gz.

OK, I'll add the check of these as fallback.
Any known paths for other distros?

> Also, if the idea is to make life easier for kernel newbies, I think the better
> would be to have the script called at kernel Makefile (something like "make
> diet"), and having a few other config's available somewhere at kernel tree,
> since even a "minimal" kernel may need (or not) a few random modules, like
> usb-storage. So, I think we should open a dialog that allows the selection of
> using the previous kernel config or selecting between a few profiles like
> "minimalist" (just the auto-detected things), "desktop" (adding things like
> usb-storage), "notebook" (with a power-saving optimized config),
> "server" (adding stuff like LVM, RAID5 and some advanced network configs).

There are different perspectives for this.  My goal to reduce the
build time with the existing kernel config for a specific hardware.
That is, it makes eaiser to create another set of kernel with test
patches or bisect.

OTOH, it would be definitely useful if we can create a clean minimum
kernel config from scratch based on the hardware information.  For that,
the use-case specific configuration (or preset) would be good.

> > The script is VERY hackish.  I should have begun with perl or whatever
> > better script language, but I chose bash and co.  So, don't expect
> > much code quality.  I'm no script guy after all :)
> 
> Using just a shellscript and binutils seems to be better than using other
> tools, since it allows the usage on minimal configured systems where the user
> might not have perl or other scripting languages.

Well, perl or python is most likely installed on every modern system,
so I think we don't stick with bash & co.  But, I see your point, and
it's also the reason I started with bash, etc.


thanks,

Takashi
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