[Buildroot] Linux and busybox-configfiles

[Shawn J. Goff <shawn.goff@accelecon.com>]

On 01/29/2013 02:57 AM, Stephan Hoffmann wrote:
> Am 29.01.2013 01:16, schrieb Shawn J. Goff:
>>
>>
>> On 01/27/2013 05:36 PM, Arnout Vandecappelle wrote:
>>> On 27/01/13 17:08, Stephan Hoffmann wrote:
>>>> Hello all,
>>>>
>>>> buildroot provides direct calls to the configuration menus for busybox
>>>> and linux:
>>>>
>>>> make linux-menuconfig
>>>> make busybox-menuconfig
>>>>
>>>> Additionally, there is a linux-savedefconfig make target.
>>>>
>>>> All these save their output in the build directory, so that all changes
>>>> get lost when "make clean" is called. Thus I don't think that I am the
>>>> only one who has been surprised to notice that "make busybox-menuconfig
>>>> && make clean && make" does not have any effect on busybox's
>>>> configuration.
>>>
>>>    This is a bit a philosophical discussion: should the configuration
>>> files of linux, busybox, etc. be considered part of the buildroot
>>> configuration or not? In the former case, they should survive a 'make
>>> clean', in the latter case they should be removed by 'make clean'.
>>>
>>>    I tend to agree that the package configs should be considered part of
>>> the buildroot config. However, if your buildroot config specifies some
>>> BR2_PACKAGE_BUSYBOX_CONFIG, then I would expect that after 'make clean',
>>> that is the config that will be used. More generically, I expect I
>>> can do:
>>>
>>>    make foo_defconfig
>>>    Do all kinds of weird stuff that completely messes things up
>>>    make clean
>>>    make
>>>
>>> and to be back in the same state as 'make foo_defconfig; make'.
>>>
>>>
>>
>> I'd like the busybox-*config and linux-*config targets should save the
>> resulting config in BR2_PACKAGE_BUSYBOX_CONFIG and
>> BR2_LINUX_KERNEL_CUSTOM_CONFIG_FILE. I keep these two locations under
>> source control in board/my_company/board_name/, so when I completely
>> mess up the config, it's just a git checkout path/to/config, and if I
>> want to keep the changes, I just add and commit the file. It also lets
>> me clearly see something has changed when I run git status.
> Do you know about busybox-update-config and linux-update-config?

I did not. I also see a barebox-update-config and a 
uClibc-update-config. Why should those not get called by the make 
*-config targets? One of the goals of Buildroot is to ensure consistent, 
repeatable builds. If it's easy for me to do a make linux-menuconfig and 
go on working without it reminding me that I've changed something and 
it's not committed yet, I think that's a bug.