Re: [opensuse-kernel] Re: [RFC] Simplifying kernel configuration for distro issues

[Borislav Petkov <bp@amd64.org>]

On Sat, Jul 14, 2012 at 04:43:32PM +0400, Cyrill Gorcunov wrote:
> For example to enable "PCI driver for virtio devices" I need to go to
> Device Drivers -> Virtio drivers, while I think it would be great to
> have everything virt. related in Virtualization section.

Actually, we need something more generic than that: everything X-related
should be automatically selected when setting CONFIG_X. And X can be any
subset of configuration options which belong to one feature, be it KVM,
distro-specific stuff, or CPU-vendor specific stuff, or whatever.

I can imagine, for example, that when a user wants to have an
AMD-specific config, it automatically selects CPU_SUP_AMD, X86_MCE_AMD
(for MCE), MICROCODE_AMD (microcode support), AGP_AMD64, EDAC_AMD64 and
a bunch of other AMD-specific features.

This would simplify not only the configuration process but also
Kconfig-related build failures since for your configuration you'll make
sure that required stuff is selected.

What I'm saying is that not only distro-specific configs but also some
sort of hierarchical config options could be defined to automatically
preselect stuff for a specific aspect and save a lot of time when
configuring a new system. Our config options have grown humongous right
about now and we can use the simplification. Of course, you can always
do fine-grained tuning afterwards but it'll save a lot of time, in
general.

Let's have an example: when I have to build upstream on a distro here,
I take the distro config and use it despite that it takes a long time
to build since everything is module - it is still better for me to
wait that one time instead of doing a dozen of trial and errors after
forgetting a config option each time.

Thanks.

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Boris.

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