On 07/13/2012 10:37 PM, 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. > > And it tends to change over time. For example, F14 (iirc) started > using TMPFS and TMPFS_POSIX_ACL/XATTR for /dev. And starting in F16, > the initrd setup requires DEVTMPFS and DEVTMPFS_MOUNT. There's been > several times when I started with my old minimal config, and the > resulting kernel would boot, but something wouldn't quite work right, > and it can be very subtle indeed. > > Similarly, the distro ends up having very particular requirements for > exactly *which* security models it uses and needs, and they tend to > change over time. And now with systemd, CGROUPS suddenly aren't just > esoteric things that no normal person would want to use, but are used > for basic infrastructure. And I remember being surprised by OpenSUSE > suddenly needing the RAW table support for netfilter, because it had a > NOTRACK rule or something. > > 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 > > - 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: > > - distro/Kconfig.suse: > > config OPENSUSE_121 > select OPENSUSE_11 > select IP_NF_RAW # .. > > - distro/Kconfig.Fedora: > > config FEDORA_16 > select FEDORA_15 > select DEVTMPFS # F16 initrd needs this > select DEVTMPFS_MOUNT # .. and expects the kernel to mount > DEVTMPFS automatically > ... > > config FEDORA_17 > select FEDORA_16 > select CGROUP_xyzzy > ...
Could this be made more dynamic? I would like to download a minimal config file from my distro's website and perhaps add my own minimal config for the hardware I own and put both downloads somewhere in my local tree, or have makemenuconfig ask me for a location of my minimal config files?
-- Hans -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-kernel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/50009a57.7000...@xmsnet.nl