Re: [Buildroot] [PATCH 00/23] Support building the Linux kernel out of tree with LINUX_OVERRIDE_SRCDIR

From: Thomas Petazzoni via buildroot <buildroot@buildroot.org>
To: Fiona Klute <fiona.klute@gmx.de>
Cc: "Florian Fainelli" <florian.fainelli@broadcom.com>,
	"Arnout Vandecappelle" <arnout@rnout.be>,
	buildroot@buildroot.org,
	"Eric Le Bihan" <eric.le.bihan.dev@free.fr>,
	"Gary Bisson" <bisson.gary@gmail.com>,
	"Jérôme Pouiller" <jezz@sysmic.org>,
	"Bernd Kuhls" <bernd@kuhls.net>,
	"Thomas Perale" <thomas.perale@mind.be>,
	"Maxime Chevallier" <maxime.chevallier@bootlin.com>,
	"Refik Tuzakli" <tuzakli.refik@gmail.com>,
	"Francois Perrad" <francois.perrad.86@gmail.com>,
	"Petr Vorel" <petr.vorel@gmail.com>,
	"Spenser Gilliland" <spenser@gillilanding.com>,
	"Giulio Benetti" <giulio.benetti@benettiengineering.com>,
	"Pascal de Bruijn" <p.debruijn@unilogic.nl>,
	"Luca Ceresoli" <luca.ceresoli@bootlin.com>,
	"Romain Naour" <romain.naour@gmail.com>,
	"Mahyar Koshkouei" <mahyar.koshkouei@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [Buildroot] [PATCH 00/23] Support building the Linux kernel out of tree with LINUX_OVERRIDE_SRCDIR
Date: Wed, 28 Oct 2026 19:18:37 +0100	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <auI8BTyNtvmooUTW@windsurf> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <d32b0f06-9105-4ee5-99ef-84a6fdda0e41@gmx.de>

On Tue, Oct 27, 2026 at 09:32:55PM +0100, Fiona Klute wrote:

> I like consistency too, but also real packages are a mess. As you know I've
> been working on package/dracut lately. It's built as
> "host-autotools-package". Autotools has out-of-tree build support (it's been
> a while since I tested that, but it worked well). Except… Dracut isn't
> actually an autotools package. Just close enough that it mostly works that
> way (i.e. it has a ./configure script; but it doesn't preserve all the
> flags, see 45acb281caa9fa30799426ba7ef4694c0b61fa85 "package/dracut: pass
> HOST_CONFIGURE_OPTS to make").
> 
> I fear we might stumble upon more of that kind if we try to make all
> autotools packages build out of tree, whether "not actually autotools" or
> "autotools with weird custom hacks". Doesn't mean I'm fundamentally against
> trying, but we need to be prepared for issues like that. If you don't like
> making it opt-in, maybe opt-out so there is a quick fix for troublesome
> packages? Except for "generic", ironically. I don't see any generic solution
> there.

Two aspects:

- Packages that use the autotools-package infrastructure but are not
  truly autotools-based should in most cases probably not use
  autotools-package.

- In any case, even pure autotools-based packages can potentially have
  out-of-tree build issues. So my idea was that
  package/pkg-autotools.mk would by default enabled out-of-tree build
  for packages that use autotools-package but still allow each
  individual package to disable out-of-tree build. The logic would be
  the opposite for generic-package: the infrastructure would assume
  out-of-tree is not supported by the package, and generic-package
  packages supporting out-of-tree would have to explicitly enable it.

Best regards,

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