[Buildroot] [PATCH 5/9] linux: enable initrd/initramfs support when cpio rootfs is chosen

[Thomas Petazzoni <thomas.petazzoni@free-electrons.com>]

Dear Yann E. MORIN,

On Sat, 28 Dec 2013 20:49:24 +0100, Yann E. MORIN wrote:

> Do we even want to expose cpio in the first place?
> 
> The way I see it:
>   - if someone wants an archive, then a tarball is a more common archive
>     type than cpio is, so we need not expose cpio. If the user wants an
>     archive, then he should just use a tarball.
>   - thus, as cpio is just a requirement for initramfs, there is no
>     reason to expose cpio in the menu, and just merge cpio as a internal
>     step of initramfs

I am using the cpio format, exposed by Buildroot, on a daily basis. My
use case is that I do a lot of kernel development. I do use Buildroot
to generate a rootfs.cpio, but I build my kernel separately (because
I'm rebuilding it many 50-100 times a day). And I simply point my
kernel configuration to the Buildroot rootfs.cpio:

~/projets/marvell/mvebu$ grep INITRAMFS_SOURCE .config
CONFIG_INITRAMFS_SOURCE="../rootfs-armv7/images/rootfs.cpio"

So yes, I *really* want to keep the cpio format option :-)

Thanks!

Thomas
-- 
Thomas Petazzoni, CTO, Free Electrons
Embedded Linux, Kernel and Android engineering
http://free-electrons.com