Re: [RFC] Simplifying kernel configuration for distro issues

[Hans de Bruin]

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
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