> On Wed, 22 Jan 1997, Illuminati Primus wrote:
>
> >
> > I was just sitting here staring at acidwarp too long and I decided to
> > write to linux-kernel about something has probably been thought of many
> > times before.. (but I haven't read anything about it yet):
> >
> > Would there be some clean way to allow a linux user to configure his/her
> > kernel BEFORE downloading the >6 meg tar, and then have some sort of
> > automatic script download only the parts of the kernel that are needed to
> > build that system?
>
> Why not just download the patches? Most people have some version of the
> kernel source online already. For instance, the Slackware development
> utilities come with a copy of whatever kernel that distribution was
> designed to be run under (2.0.13?). The patches are undeniably large in
> some cases, however if you start out current it isn't much of a problem,
> since the bandwidth usage is spread out over weeks as you update to each
> version as it comes out.
Yes, and this is what I do for the time being.. However, with a packaging
system someone would only have to download the patches that he/she
wanted..
> As for patch rejects, the only time that happens is if you've messed with
> something, or something decided to get broken, but it's usually easy to
> fix. If someone is running development kernels, they should be able to
> handle this. I realize you're talking about all kernels, though. (Still,
> the patch reject files are really self-explanatory.)
Yes, but eventually someone who doesn't turn off reject file creation will
gather quite a load of them..
I was just wondering.. IS there some utility that can go through linux
kernel source and delete parts that aren't being used?
> > Anyhow, just some ideas, they might have been proposed and bashed down a
> > long time ago, but I haven't seen any mention of this yet in the months
> > that I have been reading the mailing list.
> I think they were back in the 1.3.x days, but I honestly don't recall.
Was the response generally the same?
.. I realize what I'm asking about is a bit selfish for the user, but I
think it would help keep the kernel manageable and eventually (once it got
working), turn out to benefit the developers in the end.. The linux
kernel just keeps on growing, and I think that some day a system similar
to this will need to come into play.. We might as well start designing it
now (before Linus snaps on us)
-vermont@gate.net