Re: [Buildroot] Fwd: [PATCH] fs/user-initrd: add new method for building customizable INITRD

["Yann E. MORIN" <yann.morin.1998@free.fr>]

Witold, All,

+Adam +Thierry for dracut

On 2023-09-13 11:45 +0200, Thomas Petazzoni via buildroot spake thusly:
> On Wed, 13 Sep 2023 06:41:48 +0200
> Wit <linuxcdeveloper@gmail.com> wrote:
> > As for now user has not much influence on creation of contents of an
> > INITRD image I've made some proof of concept of some wider idea of
> > creating customizable INITRD image.
> > This patch adds possibility of creating customizable INITRD image by
> > selecting some of packages to install. At the moment it supports only
> > glibc builds but I planned to add support for musl and uClibc as well.
> > I've got also some other plans regarding this patch.
> > This patch adds new submenu in "Filesystem images" main menu.
> > 
> > I'm sending this patch for evaluation. If the idea of this patch is ok
> > for you I could take care of developing it.
> > 
> > Signed-off-by: Witold Kowolik <linuxcdeveloper@gmail.com>
> 
> Thanks for your proposal. A couple of comments:
> 
> (1) Your patch is line-wrapped, so difficult to review. Could you use
>     git send-email to send your patches?

While at the formatting:
  - commit author (i.e. email sender) must match the SoB line
  - commit title should be:  fs/user-initrd: new filesystem   (but see
    below)
  - commit log should motivat the patch, and provide explanations on how
    the patch is "designed" (don't describe, but expalain); also, no
    personal message (no "I am ..." "I do..." etc...)

> (2) Have you looked at Dracut and its integration in Buildroot? Because
>     to me it does pretty much the same as what you're doing. We know
>     Dracut's integration in Buildroot has some shortcomings, but I'd
>     rather see them being resolved rather than introduce another new
>     mechanism.

Exactly. We have an implementation of dracut, even if rickety, so I too
believe that, if anything, that should be fixed where it is broken,
rather than add a new tool with only a (very limited) subset of the
features that dracut already provides.

> (3) I see you're using a Perl script. We generally try to have most of
>     the Buildroot plumbing implemented either in shell or in Python.
>     However, it's true that having a Python interpreter on the host is
>     no longer required, while having a Perl interpreter is (which would
>     go in favor of keeping a Perl script).

We do require perl because some packages need perl as part of their
buildsystem:
  - libxml-parser-perl, intltool (496078a0a053 dependencies: add perl as
    a mandatory dependency)
  - the linux kernel

In Buildroot, nothing requires perl: we have no tooling written in perl,
and I would prefer that stays that way. We however have a lot of python
tooling, so if at all, I'd rather we add python as a requirement (or at
least tht we check for it and disable whatever needs it, or that it
depends on host-python3).

So, let's try and keep perl out of Buildroot, and keep writing python
scripts. At the worst, shell scripts, but not perl.

Regards,
Yann E. MORIN.

> Best regards,
> 
> Thomas
> -- 
> Thomas Petazzoni, co-owner and CEO, Bootlin
> Embedded Linux and Kernel engineering and training
> https://bootlin.com
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