On Thu, 31 Aug 2000, Gabriel Paubert wrote:

On Thu, 31 Aug 2000, Geert Uytterhoeven wrote:

quoted

My interest is in smaller kernel images. I don't want to compile every single
piece of PPC code that's useless for my hardware, I want to compile only what
I need. I think I'm already wasting too much of my time waiting for kernel
compiles.

And you `make {x,menu,old,}config' to take longer than `make zimage' ?

Real men use `vi .config', delete some lines and type `make oldconfig' :-)

First, kernel compile times are only fairly large after a big update, when
I do `make dep clean zImage'. Second, the proportion of time spend in the
specific PPC code (mostly arch/ppc and drivers/macintosh) is rather small.
Third, building a minimal kernel image for each machine would involve a
ton (and that's an undrestatement) of kernel options: CONFIG_INTC_8259,
CONFIG_INTC_POWERMAC, CONFIG_INTC_OPENPIC and others for the interrupt
controllers, half a dozen or so CONFIG_RTC types, same for CONFIG_NVRAM
and a few other things I surely forget. The only reasonable solution is to
aim for the smallest runtime kernel image.

Hmm... Now you make me think of something :-) What about drivers/intctrl/ to
share all code for interrupt controllers? Almost all archs have their own
i8259 code...

quoted

And since there are people who care about embedded PPC systems, it would be
great to at least have _the choice_ to compile a small specific kernel or a
large generic one.

Then build an utility which trims the kernel the same way as the smart
bootloader would do. People with embedded systems know what their target
systems is and could use it, but please don't add another couple of
hundred entries in the basic Linux kernel configuration.

  ^^^^^^^
Please don't exaggerate! I'd be happy with the 4 extra questions for
PReP, CHRP, PowerMac and MTX only (for now).

Gr{oetje,eeting}s,

						Geert

--
Geert Uytterhoeven -- There's lots of Linux beyond ia32 -- geert@linux-m68k.org

In personal conversations with technical people, I call myself a hacker. But
when I'm talking to journalists I just say "programmer" or something like that.
							    -- Linus Torvalds


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