On Tue, Oct 25, 2016 at 10:46:00AM -0700, Laura Abbott wrote:
The Fedora kernel has had roughly the same system for generating
the kernel configuration for a very long time. There are a series
of files listing configuration choices (CONFIG_FOO=y, CONFIG_FOO
is not set etc.) that get combined to generate the final config
files. This has gotten unsustainable for several reasons:
- When the system was first introduced, the only supported
arches were x86_32 and x86_64. Fedora now supports enough
other arches that we have a config-$arch-generic in addition to
config-generic
- It's difficult to tell what is actually enabled since
there are several layers of configuration combining (I have to
look at config-generic, then config-$arch-generic, then
the final config-$specific file to see what the option actually
is)
- Keeping the files organized requires manual work and pruning
I've been thinking about alternatives to the existing config
generation. One proposal was to take advantage of the upstream
kernel now supporting config fragments and keep some part of
the fedora configuration upstream. This would have the disadvantage
of requiring the configuration to be kept in sync with upstream.
Another option is to switch to a system of generation where
each configuration option is kept in a separate file. There
is no sorting or organization necessary. This would result
in a lot of small files for all the arches Fedora supports though.
Hi Laura,
Just to throw it out there, RHEL has been using the one option per file
mechanism for years now with success. Minimizes the maintenance and
conflicts. ( I know you already know that, just wanted to publicly state
that).
The volume of files is large, but it is hidden away and you only package the
resulting kernel.config files into the src.rpm.
Just a thought.
Cheers,
Don
>
> Anyone have experiences with or opinions about the kernel
> configuration generation? The goal is to only change the way
> the configurations are generated and not the options that are
> enabled.
>
> Thanks,
> Laura
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