Heads up: Linus plans to kill ARM defconfigs

[Nicolas Pitre]

On Tue, 8 Jun 2010, Russell King - ARM Linux wrote:

> On Fri, Jun 04, 2010 at 04:51:24PM -0400, Nicolas Pitre wrote:
> > Linus wants something to be done about the current defconfig mess which 
> > is perfectly legitimate.  He even suggested a possible solution.  I 
> > don't think he'll simply drop those defconfig files if we demonstrate 
> > that we're taking action to fix the actual problem.
> 
> However, having a set of patches which combine a load of defconfig
> files into one is not going to solve the problem.

It is an absolutely needed first step.

> If you're hypothesis that Linus is only looking at the diffstat, then
> what are patches to combine the defconfigs going to do?  It's going
> to create lots of noise in arch/arm/configs/ - which is precisely what
> Linus is complaining about.  In fact, patch-wise it's going to create
> an extremely large patch.  And if we do this time and time again while
> progressively reducing the defconfigs.  No, this isn't the answer -
> it's only going to make the problem worse.

I don't think that has to reach Linus' tree.  But that greatly helps 
figuring out a common config pattern that can be applied to a group of 
targets.

> I believe the only acceptable solution is to get an alterative method
> in place - no matter what it is - and remove the all but one of the
> defconfig files from the mainline kernel.  _And_, most importantly,
> kautobuild needs to be fixed so that we still get build coverage.

I personally think that your suggestion using STD_CONFIG or similar is a 
good way forward.  Specific needs for given targets can then be 
expressed along with the Kconfig menu item describing that target.


Nicolas