Re: [PATCH 0/3] selftests/bpf: Fixes for out-of-tree builds

["Ricardo B. Marlière (SUSE)" <ricardo@marliere.net>]

On Mon Sep 21, 2026 at 6:04 PM -03, Eduard Zingerman wrote:
> On Mon, 2026-09-21 at 14:40 -0600, Nico Pache (Red Hat) wrote:
>
> ...
>
>> Given your series was defferred, and there is a "rewrite" coming, what would
>> be the best approach to working together (between us three) to get these
>> fixes in that series too. 
>
> The, "rewrite", as you call it, had landed today.
> So the series in question can be re-spun.
> Regarding your patch on top of it, it appears you can just post is separately.
> However, I am inclined to be confrontational towards changes like this one.
> The purpose of the selftests makefile is to run selftests as appropriate
> for current tip of the kernel tree using a very specific kernel configuration.

Ideally, if a Kconfig symbol is needed and the kernel under test does not
have it, tests are skipped. But with BPF they were simply not built,
rendering the tests useless for anything other than in-tree vmlinux with
tools/selftests/bpf/config*.

> Main users of this makefile are BPF developers and BPF CI.

But they shouldn't be the *only* ones, IMHO. Enabling distros to build and
run the tests is also valuable to catch regressions in their kernels, don't
you think?

> Support for distros customizing the makefile is a non-goal.
> The "PERMISSIVE" change done enough damage already.

It's ugly, I agree, but what damage has it caused? I see that it's going to
be reverted anyway, but I would appreciate if you could elaborate.

Thanks!