From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1757436AbYDCMzz (ORCPT ); Thu, 3 Apr 2008 08:55:55 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1753598AbYDCMzs (ORCPT ); Thu, 3 Apr 2008 08:55:48 -0400 Received: from py-out-1112.google.com ([64.233.166.182]:22481 "EHLO py-out-1112.google.com" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1751690AbYDCMzr (ORCPT ); Thu, 3 Apr 2008 08:55:47 -0400 DomainKey-Signature: a=rsa-sha1; c=nofws; d=gmail.com; s=beta; h=subject:from:to:cc:in-reply-to:references:content-type:date:message-id:mime-version:x-mailer:content-transfer-encoding; b=n+k0UIqxYQVIOGfYQmjuA7vskDMy5VgMi9pOPFOnSRoepqv7MIbcdlp970dI6IGqlzPHSu5EYfLhMo+TH7aIvYRwD8wr8d6cfFTg2aSvUa7jzWlAzAYZZmeRguXZlUGZ+MNhEmp4EL1IYmTZmvC46twSEaWH0wEdMXO21Hh3awc= Subject: Re: Linux 2.6.25-rc8 From: Josh Boyer To: Paul Mackerras Cc: Linus Torvalds , Linux Kernel Mailing List , davej@redhat.com In-Reply-To: <18420.22563.895489.490165@cargo.ozlabs.ibm.com> References: <18418.44094.156352.405647@cargo.ozlabs.ibm.com> <18420.22563.895489.490165@cargo.ozlabs.ibm.com> Content-Type: text/plain Date: Thu, 03 Apr 2008 07:55:37 -0500 Message-Id: <1207227337.3224.6.camel@vader.jdub.homelinux.org> Mime-Version: 1.0 X-Mailer: Evolution 2.22.0 (2.22.0-4.fc9) Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org 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