"Next Generation" kernel configuration?

Jake Hamby jhamby at anobject.com
Fri Jul 23 20:50:06 PDT 2004


Conrad J. Sabatier wrote:
> On 21-Jul-2004 Devon H. O'Dell wrote:
> 
> 
>>I'm sure this will become another bikeshed, so I suggest whoever came
>>up with the idea to put up or shut up. People are interested in
>>solutions, not suggestions.
> 
> 
> Agreed.  And the original proponent of the idea was me.  I just wanted
> to see if there was any willingness to even consider something like
> this before I went and did a lot of work for nothing.
> 
> Seems the general concensus is that most people are OK with the idea,
> depending on the implementation.
> 
> I'll be quiet now until/unless I can actually come up with something. 
> :-)

If you are looking to improve the current build process, here's an idea 
someone could implement that would save a lot of people a lot of time...

My biggest annoyance with building the kernel, compared to Linux, is 
that it insists on building all of the possible kernel modules, even 
though I only want to build the ones that make sense for my hardware. 
In Linux, despite the drawbacks of the menu-based config, it is nice 
being able to easily specify Yes, Module, or No for most options.

The least intrusive approach would probably be to add a second config 
file (e.g. "MYKERNEL.modules") which would contain only the names of the 
modules to build in some make-friendly format.  You could then modify 
config(8) to automatically copy this file, if it exists, to the object 
directory where it would be included by the appropriate Makefile.  If no 
.modules file exists, then it would continue the current behavior of 
building all possible modules.

--
Jake Hamby


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