Jeff Garzik <jgarzik@mandrakesoft.com> writes:
> IMNSHO this attitude is wrong. If building the kernel is tough for
> newbies, make a userland utility with all these policy questions and
> features. We are talking about an interface on the KERNEL DEVELOPER
> side of the line.
Kernel configuration is a userland.
I think users should be able to configure the kernel using the same
environment as developers. I think any "user" config utils exist only
because make menuconfig might be a little too hard for beginners.
Of course, there is still expert mode.
> > This just can't be done with the existing kbuild system. The existing
> > config-language programs are hard to read and modify,
>
> huh? compared to what ? It is simple to read, simple to modify. The
> major nasty issue right now is dependencies not readability.
If you just mean Config.in files, then yes - they are quite simple.
Combined with Makefiles - I think it could be simpler.
> > There are a couple of preparation steps that can fruitfully begin now
> > and should happen before 2.4 in order to minimize backporting hassles
> > later.
>
> All this can be done post 2.4. Let's break _less_ not more
> configurations now.
I take it that steps don't break anything now.
> * It would be nice to be drop to add a new kernel module to the build
> without patching a single file. For example, instead of adding
> drivers/char/foo.c and patching drivers/char/{Config.in,Makefile}, the
> patch to Linus would simply add drivers/char/foo.c and
> drivers/char/foo.module. foo.module would contain configuration and
> build information normally found in Config.in and Makefile. Doing this
> implies some sort of collection step occurring, before the configuration
> and before the build.
I don't like this idea - number of files in drivers directory would
be doubled.
It may be better to include this info, say, near beginning or end
of file.c, like with Emacs formatting info.
Or continue to use one file per directory.
-- Krzysztof Halasa Network Administrator- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.rutgers.edu Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Wed May 31 2000 - 21:00:15 EST