From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1753176Ab2GRJzc (ORCPT ); Wed, 18 Jul 2012 05:55:32 -0400 Received: from mail-wg0-f44.google.com ([74.125.82.44]:47452 "EHLO mail-wg0-f44.google.com" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1752381Ab2GRJzX (ORCPT ); Wed, 18 Jul 2012 05:55:23 -0400 MIME-Version: 1.0 X-Originating-IP: [2a01:e35:2f24:93f0:b967:5b47:245b:dc32] From: Tom Gundersen Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2012 11:55:02 +0200 Message-ID: Subject: Re: [RFC] Simplifying kernel configuration for distro issues To: Linus Torvalds , LKML Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Linus, [sorry for the messed up threading, I could not figure out how to make gmail use in-relp-to] > The point I'm slowly getting to is that I would actually love to have > *distro* Kconfig-files, where the distribution would be able to say > "These are the minimums I *require* to work". So we'd have a "Distro" > submenu, where you could pick the distro(s) you use, and then pick > which release, and we'd have something like As someone working on one of the smaller distributions (Arch), I think it would be even better if rather than having "distro" entries, we'd have "application" entries. I.e., entries for applications that have specific kernel requirements/suggestions (udev, systemd, upstart, bootchart, pulseaudio, networkmanager, etc). If applications have soft requirements, they could have sub-entries explaining the benefit of enabling each. In most cases, what a distro needs depends just on what applications they ship, so you'd get the distro entries almost for free (fedora selects systemd, udev, ...). As was pointed out by someone else in this thread, it might easily happen that applications change their kernel requirements without the packagers noticing, or at least without the kernel packager being told. If it had been possible for applications to ship drop-in Kconfig files that they would install to a certain location, and the kernel would simply pick them up, that would put the responsibility of maintaining these things in the hands of the people who know the best (the application developers). Cheers, Tom