overhauling modconf
I am somewhat worried about changing modconf so close to the freeze, but the
current situation with modconf is quite unacceptable. As I see it, the issue
with the current modconf system is that it relies on unmaintained stuff and
doesn't grow easily with new kernel revisions. It is also rather flakey.
Having talked to Joey Hess, I'm hoping to see if we can overhaul modconf so
that it will actually work with dbootstrap (in my tests, it doesn't work at
all atm). The plan is two-fold:
1) converting modconf from its current shell script form to something like
debconf
2) changing the source of the module descriptions from a unmainted faq to
Configure.help
#2 is mostly done, using a simple perl script i cooked up this afternoon
[1]. Joey may be looking at #1 some time soon.
I am still looking at building alternative kernels for boot floppies, esp
for i386, so I may not have a lot of time for this in the next week or so.
If someone has some time and can look at #1, we can speed things along.
For #2, if we go with this new version, we'll need completely new
translations. Will that be a problem/bottleneck?
randolph
[1] it's a two pass thing -- it parses the kernel driver makefiles and
associates module filenames with CONFIG_* option names, then matches the
CONFIG_* names to the short descriptions in Configure.help. Thanks go to aph
for this idea. If you are interested in seeing the script, let me know. It
still needs a little work, but works for >95% of the modules.
--
Debian Developer <tausq@debian.org>
http://www.TauSq.org/
Reply to: