Re: [PATCH 0/5] kbuild

[Russell King <rmk+lkml@arm.linux.org.uk>]

On Tue, Jun 15, 2004 at 07:49:29PM +0200, Sam Ravnborg wrote:
> On Tue, Jun 15, 2004 at 08:41:36AM -0700, Tom Rini wrote:
> > On Mon, Jun 14, 2004 at 10:40:29PM +0200, Sam Ravnborg wrote:
> > 
> > > Hi Andrew. Here follows a number of kbuild patches.
> > > 
> > > The first replaces kbuild-specify-default-target-during-configuration.patch
> > > 
> > > They have seen ligiht testing here, but on the other hand the do not touch
> > > any critical part of kbuild.
> > > 
> > > Patches:
> > > 
> > > default kernel image:		Specify default target at config
> > > 				time rather then hardcode it.
> > > 				Only enabled for i386 for now.
> > 
> > While I'd guess this is better than the patch it's replacing, given that
> > most i386 kernels are 'bzImage', what's wrong with the current logic
> > that picks out what to do for the all target now?
> 
> Compared to the original behaviour where the all: target picked the default
> target for a given architecture, this patch adds the following:

This isn't the case on ARM.  I've always told people 'make zImage'
or 'make Image'.  I've never told people to use just 'make' on its
own - in fact, I've never used 'make' on its own with the kernel.

> - One has to select the default kernel image only once
>   when configuring the kernel.
> - There exist a possibility to add more than half a line of text
>   describing individual targets. All relevant information can be
>   specified in the help section in the Kconfig file

You can't fit details for 500 platforms into half a line of text.

> If we remove the current support for for example uboot we create an
> additional step in between the make and copy image.

uboot support on ARM was only recently added, and only happened
because I happened to misread the patch.  Had I been more on the
ball, the support would NOT have been merged.  However, as it did
get merged, I didn't want to create extra noise by taking it out.

Please don't take this as acceptance that throwing the uboot crap
into the kernel for ARM was something I found agreeable.  I still
find it distasteful that boot loaders have to define their own
image formats and the kernel has to conform to the boot loader
authors whims.

-- 
Russell King
 Linux kernel    2.6 ARM Linux   - http://www.arm.linux.org.uk/
 maintainer of:  2.6 PCMCIA      - http://pcmcia.arm.linux.org.uk/
                 2.6 Serial core