On Fri, 2012-07-13 at 13:37 -0700, Linus Torvalds wrote: > So this has long been one of my pet configuration peeves: as a user I > am perfectly happy answering the questions about what kinds of > hardware I want the kernel to support (I kind of know that), but many > of the "support infrastructure" questions are very opaque, and I have > no idea which of the them any particular distribution actually depends > on. [...] > The point I'm slowly getting to is that I would actually love to have > *distro* Kconfig-files, where the distribution would be able to say > "These are the minimums I *require* to work". So we'd have a "Distro" > submenu, where you could pick the distro(s) you use, and then pick > which release, and we'd have something like
I like this idea in principle.
[...]
> - distro/Kconfig:
>
> config DISTRO_REQUIREMENTS
> bool "Pick minimal distribution requirements"
>
> choice DISTRO
> prompt "Distribution"
> depends on DISTRO_REQUIREMENTS
>
> config FEDORA
> config OPENSUSE
> config UBUNTU
> ...
>
> endchoice
>
> and then depending on the DISTRO config, we'd include one of the
> distro-specific ones with lists of supported distro versions and then
> the random config settings for that version:
You might also want to *un*select some options like
CONFIG_SYSFS_DEPRECATED and CONFIG_SYSFS_DEPRECATED_V2 that need to be
set one way or the other depending on the version of udev. (I think
it's possible to kluge this with the addition of a hidden negative
config option.)
How about stuff like NET and INET, that every distro will need and yet
is configurable even without EXPERT?
[...]
> Sure, you can copy the config file that came with the distro, but it
> has tons of stuff that really isn't required. Not just in hardware,
> but all the debug choices etc that are really a user choice. And it's
> really hard to figure out - even for somebody like me - what a minimal
> usable kernel is.
[...]
And it's still hard for me as kernel packager: just because an option
was requested and enabled to support some bit of userland, doesn't mean
I know what's using or depending on it now. (I think Dave Jones made
this point already.) I'm not usually concerned with *minimal* config.
Ben.
--
Ben Hutchings
The generation of random numbers is too important to be left to chance.
- Robert Coveyou
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